#you have an entire magical world to explore and expand and focus on telling basically the same story twice?

[giudittas]

I don't know why I woke up thinking about the Fantastic Beasts franchise and how it could've easily be an heartwarming studio ghibli-esque story about weird animals and the environment and found family but they had to go and turn it into harry potter 2.0

[interact-if]

Day 5 of the interviews! let’s give it up for Ligia! :chinhands:

Ligia, author of Love the Guard, Be the King

Latino Heritage Month Featured Author

Mathias' heart has been bleeding since his father, the former King, decided to punish you for his mistakes. As the youngest child of a lesser bourgeois, you were raised in the castle, between the King’s cruelty, the Queen’s friendship, and  Mathias’s kindness (or supposed kindness?).

Now, more than twenty Carnivals since your arrival, the King is dead and the Queen’s sickness  worsens each day. As the azure taint spreads in the kingdom and the Opalean Wars come to an end, it’s Mathias’s time to sit on the throne.

Will the docile Prince become a kind King, a violent Monarch, or a ruthless Tyrant? Will you have any say in it? And how much will your relationship change?

Love the Guard, Be the King Demo | Author’s Kofi | Read more [here]

Tags: historical, romance

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT)

Q1: So, tell us a little bit about the projects you’re working on!

With pleasure! Right now, I’m working on three main projects. My personal Visual Novel project, “Love the Guard, Be the King,” a second Visual Novel I’ve been secretly working on with a good friend for the past 10 months or so, and I also have an ongoing book series about hot, quirky supervillains—but I’ll focus only on the first two cause that’s what we’re here for, right? Hahaha.

LtGBtK is a really intimist experience, focused more on the MC’s and RO’s character arcs and how we can change depending on our experiences and how we feel about them. The entire plot happens in only four days, but it takes into account almost 30 years of history—basically Mathias’s (the only RO) entire life!

“Crystal Library” has mystery, romance, magic, 6 ROs, and a ton of memorable scenes already. I’m working on the graphics and the programming for this one, while Coco Nichole (@dreamybard), one of my favorite writers ever, is the brilliant mind behind the plot and all of CL’s characters! I can’t wait to share this one with you all. Romance is optional in both. :)

Q2: What excites you most about using interactive fiction? What are some of the biggest challenges?

What I LOVE and FEAR about all types of interactive fiction is how it invites players to, on a much deeper level, be part of the narrative. When reading books, we all work hard to translate beautiful sentences and scenes into images in your head. We interact with it, yes, but when playing IFs, we also explore the narrative in a different way; we have so much more agency over what happens! We sometimes have different paths to choose from, beautiful illustrations to unlock, or character traits that change depending on our choices… it’s amazing, and, IMO, it’s a very unique way to experience narratives.

But it’s also very complex, very demanding, and it can easily get out of hand if you give the players too many options/branches to follow, mainly when working with small teams or, in my case for LtGBtK, alone. *takes a deep breath* I just hope I’m doing a good job. .-.

Q3: What has been something in your project you’ve had to do a weird amount of research for?

Besides programming lol basically everything. For LtGBtK, I’m trying to create this weird fantasy with a modern-medieval society (?), so I’m constantly researching medieval customs, traditions, tools, and weirdly specific stuff like socks. Did people wear socks in the medieval era? What were their playing cards made of? When was ice cream invented? How did they shave? How did kids become knights? What were their perfumes made of? And soaps? What did they eat? How different was their wine? And what kind of materials or slang or fabrics can I use, and what can I change without completely breaking immersion?

 And then I shove all that into a pot and adapt it to a world where Mathias can literally put the world on fire with a wave of his hands. ♥

Q4: Which of your characters is most like you? How?

I think I’m a mix of them all, but mainly Mandra and Rafa (one of my main characters in my supervillain books). They have wildly different personalities and stories, but those two have clear views of the kind of person they want to be, they’re not afraid of their soft sides, and they are ready to work hard to become good at what they love. Rafa has a specially strong connection to her brother, like my siblings and I, and Mand is often locked in an eternal state of wanting to be alone and wanting to be surrounded by family/loved ones, so I guess we meet there too!

Q5: Does your heritage influence your characters as you create them? (How? Why or why not?)

Yes! There are the very basic ways, like habits, names, food, family dynamics, settings (mainly in my books, which are all very Brazilian), and Holidays. And then there’s a more personal way that I’m not entirely sure I can explain because I lived in Brazil for 28 years, and I’m not sure I can put that into words. The classics of our literature are different, Art, architecture, and music developed differently, my country was violently colonized and still faces the results of that violence (including but not limited to structural racism, classism, misogyny etc), I learned some Capoeira in my physical education class at school, we call non-Brazilians “gringos,” and so on. This is my normal, and this is what my characters would see as normal too, because I don’t know any different.

At the very core, all my characters are influenced by my country’s history, by our relationship with other countries, and by the values my parents taught me, passed down to them by my Indigeous-Spanish-Portuguese-German foremothers/fathers. :P

The main, more palpable way my heritage influences my characters, though, is through humor and theme. I think Brazilians have a very specific, sharp, and often very smart kind of humor that, IMO, stems from the type of history our country has, and the way we look at life, sometimes translating pain into humor. As for themes, I usually write about what makes me angry... and there’s a lot in Brazil’s history and modern society that causes me that. :)

But all I know for sure is that I want to show the world Brazilians are much more than samba and soccer.

 Q6: What is something you love to see in interactive fiction?

Other people! In the same way I add my history and worldview to my creations, I always approach stories thinking that there’s a whole, well, history behind them. And I love that! Also, I adore choices that feel impactful + good friendships and family relationships + soft romances with mutual respect. ♥

Q7: Any advice to give?

Hmm. Be proud and celebrate who you are and where you’re from. Learning and understanding the world inside us is a life-long process, so it’s always a victory to discover new pieces of ourselves. :) Also, if you can, talk to people that come from different cultures than yours to expand your worldview, don’t be afraid to be soft (the world needs more kindness), and please study personal finance. Seriously. XD

[thefolioarchives]

Reading of 2021, Part V

26. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer

Vandermeer is one of my favourite authors and his Southern Reach trilogy was my main reason for going back to uni to do my master's. This short story collection was published long before SR, so it's daft that I didn’t read it for my dissertation and throughout reading it I felt like I was being smacked in the face with that realisation, again and again. Kind of torturous for a person who still has panic attacks about small stuff she said on the phone to a stranger, let alone big life stuff like your master's degree. Hahahahaha. *Goes and cries for a bit*

Moving on, this collection brings into focus the fictional, terrifying and crazy city that is Ambergris. From the perspective of returning missionaries, a historical pamphlet for tourists and nightmarish narratives of the lives of lowly artists. I'm a big fan of this as a concept and I feel like Vandermeer has managed to make Ambergris come alive through the various accounts of the characters we meet and its old and creepy history. It didn't GRIP me, however, not like Annihilation did all those years ago and it did not make me immediately want to read Shriek and Finch: an Afterword (novels that are included in this edition as well). The writing style is quite different from his other works that I've read, a bit old-timey as we like to say in the business, which made it hard for me to thoroughly immerse myself in it.

27. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Macado

Another short story collection! This one was marketed to me as some brilliant reinvention of SFF. I hate when they try to do that as it sets the bar so incredibly high and I can't help but be swept away in the assumptions and reviews. What kind of expectations can a person who loves genre literature expect after reading something like that? Well, I was expecting the high heavens and sadly it didn't live up to its marketing. To be honest, there isn't a lot of science fiction or fantasy in these stories and if I was to describe it I'd maybe call it contemporary fiction with a dash of magical realism and the uncanny. I'm not saying all genre literature has smack me in the face with dragons and photon torpedoes, but sure, I was expecting more. That being said, I loved some of the stories a lot and I appreciate Macado's creativity in presenting her stories and characters. I especially liked "Inventory" (a woman recounts her sexual history while awaiting the end of the world), "Mothers" (a jump in time story about a woman and her ex, their life and journey towards motherhood), "Especially Heinous" (this one was probably my favourite: each little snippet is a take on a Law and Order: SVU episode (I have never seen the show), as Benson and Stabler struggle with mental issues, doppelgangers, criminals and relationships) and the "Resident" (an author arrives at an artistic retreat and weird things start to happen).

28. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham

I have a lot of feelings about this book. It tells the story of 4 men who grew up on a reservation in the American Midwest and how one stupid mistake, can lead to… bad things, basically. The narrative is tense with the potential of violence throughout, no one is safe as reckonings must be made. What I really loved about this story is how the Native American culture is represented. The cultural references felt completely unique and for someone who's never read a book where the majority of the characters ( here mostly all) are Native American, it's powerful to read how much of that original culture has been retained throughout years of blood, slaughter and violent oppression. And yet there's this friction between the old and the new that I enjoy as well. How one of the main characters is in school and they're told to create a mural. She wants to create one that's dedicated to basketball because basketball is her passion but her teacher is all "but what about your heritage?". Is that what all native American identities boil down to? Heritage? Either way, it brought up a lot of interesting questions and themes that I'm keen to explore in more literature like this.

29. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

I think I bought this book on sale a long time ago after reading how it had been nominated or won a lot of SFF awards, but I didn't pick it up until going on holiday in late June. This is essentially political fantasy intrigue dressed up as science fiction. A space station needs a new ambassador in the capital of a massive galactic empire because the other one died under mysterious circumstances and drama ensues! The "science" part of this book is so vague and it kind of bothers me. Here are some of my questions:

How has the empire managed to expand so much? How does space travel aka the jump gates work? Did the empire create them? What's the difference between humans and whatever the galactic empire's main "race" is? Did the humans come from earth, originally? How does it work that an entire planet is a city? WHAT THE HELL DOES EVERYONE DO FOR WORK?

I like the main characters (and the relationship that develop between "newbie in town" and "established authority trying to teach newbie the ways" is well done) but the city gave me a distinct Hunger Games Capitol vibe (without the excessive decadence) which in turn took me out of the story a little bit. Maybe it's an issue when creating a supposedly sprawling metropolis. Some of the finer details get glossed over, its history is never fully established and you only really get to see a small portion of it. I'm a big fan of fictional cities and I like to be able to almost smell them off the page, if that makes sense. However, this book never stops going and it's, overall, a very exciting read. The ending sets up a nice story for the second book which, to be fair, sounds like it might answer some of my space-related questions so I might be picking that one up at some point.

[zero2heroyesindeed]

So Tangled the series ends in just a few hours.

What can I say about this show, this wonderful wonderful show. I still remember my reaction to that first promo image in 2015 and being excited since this was the first Disney movie to series spin off in years and with how much the landscape of tv animation had changed in that time (much more focus on overarching stories and continuous, in-depth character arcs) it would no doubt be interesting to see. I remember everyone HATING that the hair was back but I didn’t mind as long as it made sense and was part of a good story and OH MY WAS IT PART OF A GOOD STORY.

Tangled the series is a show that somehow feels like it’s been around forever yet also feels like it’s not been around long at all. I watched Before Ever After the day it came out and same with What the Hair. A few months later I binged from Rapunzel’s enemy to Max’s enemy and fell in love with this show. The stunning art style and flowing animation, the respect and attention put into making the returning characters feel exactly as we remember them while also perfectly integrating every new character flawlessly into the world. The show completely eclipsed the original movie in every possible way in my opinion. And it only got better the further we got into this story and lore.

Instead of continuing on about how amazing this show is and how grateful I am for it’s existence as both a Disney obsessed teen and animation fan and I just wanna sing the praises of the crew, there are countless posts more we’ll put together than mine that accomplish that. So what i’m gonna do is instead throw it all the way back to the first season and go in chronological order and pin point the 10 most important moments in the series as a fandom. These are not the most emotional or impactful moments, just things that were a huge deal in the fandom.

1: Life After Happily Ever After

The first ever real impression of the series we got and an indication of what a ride we would be in for. Bringing in Alan Menkin to continue writing the music showed just how far this show was going to go to create the most faithful continuation as possible. It was also the introduction to our precious Cass and showed Eugene getting ready for the first of many proposals we would see throughout the series.

2: Eugene and Rapunzel talk after the coronation disaster

Who could ever forget when Rapunzel and Eugene officially became the most developed and healthy Disney couple. This was basically the moment most people fell in love with the series and it’s not hard to see why. Tangled the Series wasn’t just cute Princess hijinks with some action thrown in, it took it’s characters and their relationships seriously in a way now Disney show had ever done up to that point and could be mature. Rapunzel asking Eugene to be patient with her to this day still gives me chills and showed the direction this show was taking Rapunzel’s character and we were all along for the ride.

3: Rapunzel dreams of Gothel

OOH BOY this moment. While the fandom was still relatively small by this point this moment sent everyone into an absolute frenzy. While Before Ever After featured mentions of the Sun Flower and the King’s ptsd of losing Rapunzel, this was when the flood gates opened for all the angst and tears. Rapunzel’s trauma of the tower and Gothel’s treatment of her were not gonna be glossed over, they would be explored in excruciating detail which to this day is still one of the greatest elements of the series. Just because Gothel is gone doesn’t mean the 18 years of abuse she put Rapunzel through magically heals (pun intended).

4: Varian’s introduction

I don’t even need to say anything for this one. It’s Varian. (gonna be honest. It is 3am in my corner of the globe and I am struggling to find the energy to keep writing this much, so we’re just gonna rush through the rest of these).

5: Big Brothers of Corona/ aka Eugene is a perfect human being

This was the episode that cemented Eugene as one of my favourite Disney characters of all time. I can not count how many times I have rewatched the ending to this one alone. But it was also a fantastic episode for developing Lance’s character and integrating him as part of the shows main cast moving forward despite this only being his second appearance. Also I forgot how small Red and Angry (or the girls formally known as Red and Angry) were.

6: You promised!

This is still my favourite callback to the movie the show ever did. To me Rapunzel saying she never breaks a promise in the original movie feels out of place. Like Rapunzel keeping her promises was going to be a huge part of the story early in development and that line is just a reminant of that draft that should’ve really been taken out. But I don’t care because it gave us this beautiful moment. Also this moment cemented Nigel as my most hated character on the show.

7: “Difficult decisions are what make us who we are”

I can’t with this scene and just how brilliant this episode was at dealing with the fall out of Queen For a Day and how crucial it was to Rapunzel’s character development in retrospective. Everything she has done in season 3 and every action she has taken can be tied back directly to what she learned in this moment. If that ain’t good story telling then I don’t know what is.

8: The Tower Falls

I’m just gonna say it. This is my favourite scene from the series. Everything in this moment is perfection. The music, the staging, the visuals, the emotion. It all builds to an absolutely devastating climax as Rapunzel watches her childhood home crumble to the ground leaving behind one pieces of the walls she used to paint on. If wanna frame the moment Rapunzel starts tearing up as the tower collapses and display it on my mantle because I love it so much.

9: Rapunzel reaches her limit

I couldn’t finish this episode for hours after seeing this first scene. Rapunzel finally took a stand against her father and I was just making inaudible gasps throughout my first time watching it. Then there’s that bombshell at the end where Raps compares her father’s actions to that of Gothel’s that never fails to shake me to my very core no matter how many times I rewatch it.

10: Ready As I’ll Ever Be

What? We’re you expecting the biggest song this show was turned out to not make the list? I mean it was the first time Tangled the series was able to get the attention of those outside the fan base and hooked so many people into checking the show out. This was the moment Tangled the series just left the movie in the dust and from there it just kept pushing further and further with each season.

Not really sure how I should end this. I am very emotional and very tired but I refuse to go to sleep. I am staying up until this finale drops because I am not going to go to sleep knowing i’ll wake up in a world where Tangled the Series is over. This show is a once in a lifetime experience that is in my top 5 television shows of all time. It might not have had the legacy of Phineas and Ferb or the popularity of Gravity Falls but it had so much love, energy and passion behind it and you can tell everyone making this show loved it just as much as we did. I’ll probably end up doing lists like this for season 2 and 3 when I get around to binging the entire Tangled franchise (which will probably be around Summer).

Thank you to the indescribably talented crew of writers, animators, designers, and directors (and I am so sorry if I missed any other positions out but you are all so amazing). Thank you Mandy and Zach for giving your voices to Rapunzel and Eugene and letting us explore their life after Happily Ever After and letting their journey continue. Thank you Eden, Jeremy and James for bringing life to Cass, Varian and Lance who expanded the world of Tangled and felt like perfect additions to the main cast. Thank you Alan Menkin and Glen Slater for continuing to write phenomenal music and putting in your all for something you clearly didn’t even need to do in the first place. Every piece of music for this show has left me breathless (and not just from belting Waiting in the Wings to myself). This 3 year Journey has been simply sensational and I can’t wait to see how it all ends.

Next stop anywhere!

[comicteaparty]

July 13th-July 19th, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from July 13th, 2020 to July 19th, 2020.  The chat focused on Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R by snuffysam.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R by snuffysam~! (http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until July 19th, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

carcarchu

I'm only 5 pages in so far, but this comic has a great sense of humour i've already laughed out loud at some of the jokes

Deo101 [Millennium]

god yes the jokes all hit so well

carcarchu

i noticed an error on tapas, page 42 and page 45 are identical

Deo101 [Millennium]

oh no

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

@carcarchu fixed, thank you for pointing that out!

carcarchu

i'm 63 pages in now and i'm really enjoying this comic so far. it's solidly paced with an interesting cast of characters. the banter is really fun to read and i'm loving how the world building expands with each new character introduced

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

glad to hear it!!!

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Damn I feel bad for only reading this now

I love the comedic pauses in between the jokes, and it makes the situation more awkward and hilarious for me!

Also fourth wall breaking and lampshades

Feather J. Fern

I really like the line "I can't hear you from over there." Lampshading why people monologue but they are stepping away from the listener

I really enjoy these types of jokes, this comic has really good comedic timing.

Also It is long, but easy to digest, so I'm speeding through quite easily.

Also Sir Pokes a Lot!! My favourite character, and you killed them! (I love the animated parts of the comic too)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

thank u!!!

and yeah, sorry about sir pokes-a-lot

Deo101 [Millennium]

Can not wait for y'all to meet my fave

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Wait WHAT SIR POKES A LOT DIES WHAT THE HELL

Oh yes, the animated parts always get me by surprise and I love them too

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

imo, there's an even sadder death in book 2...

RebelVampire

I like that the beginning just has a lot of comedy even while establishing the exposition parts. So you don't really even notice you're learning about characters, the world, and so forth, because the jokes just really make the entire experience vastly entertaining. My favorite moment in the comic is probably now when all the governors show up and Electric Zebra to fight the demon. Cause it was like a party of badasses, had lots of great comedy, lots of great fighting, and just all around it was nice to see everyone else embrace Mizuki's strengths too. My favorite character is a tie between Electric Zebra and Sword Warrior/Taci. Electric Zebra because I love that he works for the gov but also hates the gov while also moonlighting as a musician. He just all around is a fun character for me who could do no wrong. Taci I like because he's simultaneously arrogant, smart, caring, and selfish. I also like that he just blatantly announces his plans to become dictator. As for the art, I really love the colors. The entire comic is just a really colorful experience without being over-saturated, and I really think that makes it stand out, regardless of the other 3D aspects and such that make it stand out as well, of course. I like in the current book it explores the nature of making friends. Since Mizuki is trying hard to make friends with Stella, and Stella isn't having that. So I enjoy this exploration in terms of kind of what do you even do in those situations and how can you peacefully co-exist and overcome that grump gap.

As for the overall related content and the comic's strength, these are one in the same for me: the comedy. This is by far one of the few comic's that clicks for me in terms of comedy. Not only does it have fantastic timing, but a lot of it is really smart with lots of callbacks to things that happened - and damn do I love that sort of continuity. It's not even just the one-liner jokes though. Sometimes it's just the stories overall way of solving problems in comedic ways that is the best, so all in all, just a great entertaining comic.

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

The dialogue is so funny to go through, I love the way Snuffy characterises and just has fun!

also the cell shaded rendering is so cool! I love the aesthetic and design !

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

@RebelVampire regarding continuity stuff, this is basically the ending of book 2 lmao(edited)

mathtans

Hm, so this is somehow a trickier one for me to analyze since I've been reading it since the first CTP. Admittedly I fell behind after Book2 (busy months) but I just got caught back up (SpaceMySpace...) so I guess I'll do some further pondering and check back in later. ^^

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

ok so i finished re-reading my comic the only joke that made me legit laugh out loud this re-read was the dancing in panel 3 of this page: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/255 just because i completely forgot i put that gag in there lol

tbh my favorite character in the comic is taci. like, before his introduction, the comic was incomplete, in a sense. but with him in the picture, all the writing just fits together. (even past the fact that books 3-5 wouldn't happen without taci being a total weirdo who mailed hundreds of letters to the galaxy knights under fake names, lol)

Deo101 [Millennium]

taci is also my favorite,,, as you know, aha

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Given the comic’s emphasis on comedy, what was your favorite joke insofar? What made it stand out to you compared to the others? In what ways does the comic’s comedy stand apart from other comics?

10. What do you think of Mizuki’s tactics for using magic? Is she crazy as many characters imply, or do you think she’ll continue to make it work far into the future? How will this decision affect her skills as a strategist?

11. What do you think King Zebugu is doing participating in Galaxy Knights trials? Do you think he’s finally changed his ways, or is he up to something? Also, will this help Taci achieve his own goals?

12. Do you think Mizuki will be able to become a Galaxy Knight? If so, what other trials will she have to work through? Additionally, what will become of some of the other characters such as Stella, Taci, and Pejiba in the trials?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Okay my favorite joke so far was DEFINITELY this one, it's the first one I think that really made me like, fully laugh out loud. I dont know why it got to me so much. Also it made me love cahe very much as well.

SPOILER

Also I think Mizuki's magic probably IS something to do with her abillity to copy other's magic really easily, and probably more efficiently.

and kinda combo of 11 and 12 but I hope they all become galaxy knights and be friends :)

(including king zebugu)

back about the magic thing I KNOW weve been told anyone can do any magic, it's just very draining and hard, so they use their own magics always... but People have also commented on her ability to actually utilize other's magics SO i feel like theres more to it than just her being incredibly stubborn.

RebelVampire

I'm sorry Cahe. You used to be my #2 fave character, but then Taci.

Deo101 [Millennium]

LITERALLY SAME

RebelVampire

My favorite joke changes each reading, but right now I'm gonna go with Book 2 when Mizuki is remarking about forgetting something important and then we see Enetoro still stalling for the talent show. It was such great timing since it was long enough most readers probably forgot about it in the front of their mind but still recent enough you're like oh yeah. And I just like that long ass joke setup for the entire book. As for how the comic's comedy in general stands apart, just superior timing. A lot of comedy is about timing, and this comic is just spot on everytime. As for how Mizuki uses magic, it's probably a bit of both. She is crazy, but she will probably make it work for a long time to come just out of sheer force of will and stubbornness. But I think her having to learn so many abilities and find ways to utilize them together can only increase her skills as a strategist, since it allows her to assess the full potential of every ability and command others to reach that potential. King Zebugu is probably up to something again. I don't think he's as evil in the first books, but I def think there's something going on that he isn't telling anyone that he'll reveal towards the end and say, "Well good luck Mizuki peace out." I don't think it'll help Taci though. I think Taci will just wind up getting roped in and never get even one step closer to becoming the dictator he always wants to be. I do think Mizuki will become a Galaxy Knight. As for other trials, I'm not entirely sure. I imagine there's gonna be some sort of tournament arc though cause otherwise how is Stella supposed to say something about how this is a true contest for warriors. I think Stella will befriend Mizuki, and Taci will at least win something he can brag about. I think Pejiba won't win though, but I also think Pejiba would be content to try again and just go back to skipping around with Cahe.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

There's... somewhat of a tournament arc coming up? The structure is gonna be weird compared to other tournament arcs, but it's definitely one of the more interesting chapters I've written lol. So... have fun speculating on that for the next three years lmao

Regarding some of the other questions - there's currently enough information in the comic to figure out all the 11th-hour plot twists for Book 3. I won't say there's enough information to easily figure the plot out, lol, but you could figure it out. Though - there is absolutely something going on that King Zebugu isn't telling anyone about (it's kind of a habit at this point, lol).

mathtans

1. You know something I like about the beginning? The links to the original artwork. It's just a subtle thing down at the bottom, but it simultaneously shows the progress made by the artist, and allows anyone thinking 'wow I could never do anything like that' to realize that it didn't happen overnight.

Also the gradual world building is really well done. You don't get too much at once.

2. I think my favourite moment remains how Mizuki defeated Zebugu near the end of Book 1. It was just really clever in terms of reincorporating something subtle (the comic's good at that in general) to turn the tables, and played off his personality more than his magic, which was also clever. There's lots of other great moments too, but that one stands out over time, I think because we were looking at a climax there.

3. Favorite character is probably Zaxaty. Yeah, yeah, mathtans going for the major lesbian, big surprise, but hear me out. She's connected to the King, a major antagonist, but has her own personality and I don't think she's afraid to slap him down if needed. She might even end up connected to the major protagonist (because of reader ships). She's into art, there's that whole bizarre roller skating thing just to point out she's not normal. I possibly enjoy hairstyles like hers. And she sustained major injuries in the big Book 2 battle but sucked it up and still did what she could. So there.

(Before Zaxaty it was probably Pejiba. She seemed smart and capable.)

4. Character interaction... possibly Mizuki and Taci, simply because I tend to enjoy their interactions with everyone else in the cast. So when they get together, whew... possibly related, Mizuki has a tendency to be oblivious due to inexperience or failing her perception checks, while Taci can be oblivious because he's so full of himself. Their battle and the Sword Warrior revelation was another good moment overall.

5. Again, I'm hardly a person to be commenting on art. But the rendering effects and the occasional animated panels kind of blow me away.

(Not the first person to remark on that, admittedly.)

6. I'm not great with themes either. Perseverance is probably one, based on what/who Mizuki has to put up with. Also friendship, which Rebel referenced, and can even be seen in the earlier bits with the group coming together (Cahe and Pejiba taking it to the next level). And how those in power aren't necessarily the best at decision making (is that a theme)?

Then there's mystery, like what are peoples' goals. Is that a theme? I don't know what I'm talking about, let's face it.

7. Something about the story and content is how much development's gone into it. I don't know if the side stories were started in part due to StArt Faire, or if it provided some perpetual motion, but for example Gynu and Suzigu have this entire childhood backstory in there, and we never saw that much of them in Book 1. (Maybe that one was to highlight more Galaxy Knight stuff? But there's others that expand on otherwise minor characters.)

Then there's the cast page, which seems to be constantly updating, and includes extra random trivia and even what seem like really really minor characters (like the Ferryman).

I have no clue how snuffysam manages to do all that stuff and yet continue to update multiple times in a week. With, as Rebel pointed out, very good comedy too, both situational and connected to character personalities.

8. Comic strength is I think at times doing the unexpected. Like throwing in animation, or referencing someone new or something that adds new pieces to the magic dynamic. Like you want to keep reading to know what comes next because even if it's what you think it might be, there's probably some new aspect you didn't expect that will be there too.

Anyway, there's some thoughts, and for all I know it's similar to stuff I already said in a previous chat. If so, whoops. More tomorrow. I type slow.

(Incidentally, related to the stories, the "wingwomanicon" story won't load for me... it's a blank pdf. And the link in the story proper for when it first went up seems to link to the wrong story.)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

@mathtans I really should test my links lol... the story should be fixed now

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

mathtans

9. I'm not sure I could pick a favourite joke. Mizuki's habit of breaking the fourth wall tends to be cleverly done. Coruby's wit matches well with his character. I'll echo what Rebel said about the timing too; there's effective use of beat panels and the like too.

10. Mizuki's probably crazy, or perhaps it's more her obliviousness, but she's very good at working with what she has to minimize the drain. She also must have a really good memory. I think the main problem with her ability to strategize is she's not great at long term planning, everything seems to be more "in the moment".

(I figure you've got a lot going on as is there. ) Sorry, must scamper again, back later. Should we comment on ships too here, or is that mostly covered by the comic itself?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hey, you can comment on ships as much as you want!

mathtans

Zebugu and Taci might be a ship. Can't be that much animosity without deeper feelings somewhere, right?

RebelVampire

I can't decide how I feel about Zebugu/Taci. That is a ship that makes sense as much as it doesn't make sense. I am stuck in a loop.

I am looking forward to more Taci because Taci. There can never be enough Taci in the comic, and I think I just really enjoy how he works off Mizuki because it offers lots of beautiful comedic potential. My final words are just amazing comedy comic that everyone should check out.

mathtans

11. I think King Zebugu is in the trials in part because he doesn't like that his wizard and his accountant were former Galaxy Knights. Maybe it's the ace they play to get him under control at times, maybe they don't need to, but I think he's trying to gain more power over his underlings, and by extension the planet. He's always got an angle. As to Taci, for him it's probably more ego driven, but he does have two abilities so maybe he wants to see how he compares off planet. I don't see either of them winning, I see them potentially cancelling each other out so the other guy doesn't win.

12. I think Mizuki could become a Galaxy Knight, but I don't think it'll happen in Book 3. In particular Bily is being set up as an antagonist against her (she has a similar ability to duplicate the spells of someone else, though she does need to touch them AND she has a beef with Mizuki over being the one to knock her brother out of contention). Other trials, I'm not sure... there might be one where they have to team up with someone else. Mizuki and Stella would be an interesting situation, as would Taci and anybody. I don't think Motorcycle Man or Willpower-Copy Lady will get far since the cast page only gives them minor character status. But then that could be part of the joke in the end.

Rebel's analysis regarding the others looks pretty good, actually. I'm not sure how hammer guy fits in, is one thing.

Fun that Stella's officially out now, incidentally. I don't see her going for shorter women though. Also, I wonder what constellations she might have that are in no way tied to the stars as we know them? And for that matter, she made a "Frozen" reference, which is usually Mizuki's domain. Perhaps she's also aware of the 4th wall (or "Frozen" went international there on 'SpaceMySpace' or something). Anyway.

13. Well, that last Starstuff Story is only one page long, so potentially looking forward to reading the rest of that. Seeing how the tournament plays out will be interesting... I'm more hyped about it than the gatherings plot of Book 2, maybe it's the extra title drop, dunno. Also vaguely curious about what's happening with everyone back on the planet during this time... like, if the King's away, who's running the place? (Zaxaty?)

Incidentally, the Galaxy Knights must be pretty well off financially. They set up housing and roommates for EVERYONE, then almost right away had a challenge and eliminated most of the people. Like, a lot of those rooms they didn't need.

Random question too, how DID the Starstuff stories get their start?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

@mathtans I dunno how I keep screwing this up... anyway, I checked, and the newest story is now 100% fixed.

The original reason for Starstuff Stories was to flesh out characters' move pools for potential video game adaptations. Like, that's why Green Archer uses explosive arrows and chain arrows in her story, and why Chill Bro has ice armor in his. Though it evolved over time to just being interesting stories that I wanted to tell that wouldn't necessarily focus on Mizuki.

mathtans

Sorry, was needed elsewhere. Then read the story. I didn't expect ears to be a thing, and that poor woman is cursed. ^.^ That's a neat origin idea, I hadn't thought along those lines. Looks like the story has evolved too, there's been some scenes without Mizuki too (though I guess they were in some way related).

14. For final words, just keep at it I guess, you've got a very interesting world set up and do well at engaging your audience too, from what I can tell.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Zebugu/taci huh...? I can see them being exes or something

mathtans

Maybe that's the real reason Taci wants to kill Zebugu.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Zebugu forgot to tell taci they broke up, and stood him up!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

That does sound like something Zebugu would do...

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

also, regarding something @mathtans said - Looks like the story has evolved too, there's been some scenes without Mizuki too (though I guess they were in some way related). yeah i had to rewrite book 3 like two times before I realized the story worked better if it didn't focus on mizuki all the time. like, book 3 introduces the most new characters out of any book so far, and i was completely neutering it by forcing all their arcs to relate to mizuki in some way. thanks to breaking that mentality, i'm able to include stuff like characters having rivalries with each other in ways that mizuki wouldn't even find out about, which helps keep the book from getting bogged down imo.

mathtans

It's cool that you draft everything out to that extent. And it's not out of the blue, she wasn't there for some of the big battle ending Book 2 either.

(Or at the talent show for most of the story. )

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R this week! Please also give a special thank you to snuffysam for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/

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[asweetlovemessage-blog]

a sweet good morning message for my love | TAM RELAX

bacsiykhoa.com

           - My Blog                    13-17 phút              

”

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10 Brainstorming Techniques & Tips for Tapping Into Your Creative Side by Quincy Seale 12-16 phút

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James Allen wrote this about thought: “Man is made and unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also creates the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. Between these two extremes are all the many grades of character, and man is their maker and their master. ”

So if man is the maker and master of thought, how do you go about learning to harness your own thoughts to create a better reality and become a more efficient, more productive, and more successful human being?

Well, obviously there are plenty of ways to go about such an endeavor, but today I want to talk about one of them. Brainstorming.

Because in order for us to get better at thinking, we first need to learn how to produce more thoughts. The more thoughts we have, the more chances we have to bring something more exciting into this world, and the more we generate new thoughts, or brainstorm, the better our mind gets at creating these new ideas. The Key to Brainstorming

The key thing to realize about brainstorming is that it’s solely about creation. It’s not about judging the ideas that arise or forcing yourself to think a certain way. What it really is, when it comes down to it, is “forceful creation.” To put it another way, you are willfully forcing your brain to be creative.

And since creativity is something that should be allowed to run its own course rather than be intellecualized, the entire process is a bit of a contradiction.

For this reason, it is a process rife with confusion and hesitance. So today I want to go over some different brainstorming techniques you can use. And you can use these to attack any problem in your life – from coming up with a new marketing strategy for your business to writing a new book to launching a new website to designing a new life for yourself.

Let’s have a look. 1. Mindmapping Software

Mindmapping Software

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The first tool I want to introduce is actually software, and I realize this might sound extremely counter-intuitive and possibly counterproductive. After all, how in the world can you tap into your mind’s innate creativity with an electronic-based program?

But I stand by my assertion that mindmapping software really is priceless when it comes to this type of thinking, and it’s very hard to describe until you just dig in and give it a try.

The type of software I’m talking about specifically is the kind used by MindJet MindManager and Freemind.org, the latter of which, as the name applies, is downloadable for free.

The way these program works is you have an empty page with theoretically as much room as you could ever need. You click on the blank slate and create a bubble or box, depending on which program you’re using. You then write in the box the main idea you’re working from.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re planning out a new website. You might write the name of the website here. If you click on another place on the page, it creates new nodes that comes out from that. You might lable one “Marketing,” one “Products,” and one “Audience,” for example.

Then from each of these nodes, you can create other smaller nodes. From “Marketing,” you might branch out to “Follow-up Marketing,” “Social Marketing,” “Branding,” and so on.

And you keep branching out and getting more and more specific until you’re just hammering out specific ideas for each segment of the web you’re creating.

This is just one way to use it – your mindweb or mindmap can be ogranized however you see fit.

And of course you can also do this type of mind-mapping technique on paper. But I find it way more productive to do it with software. It’s like a whole new world of creativity opens up to me when I match the speed of my mind and the speed of a computer with this old technique. 2. Become a List Whiz

Become a List Whiz

Photo Credit: matthewvenn | Flickr

A great way to train yourself to be more creative is to get in the habit of writing lists. Set time aside everyday to write lists about random things, or pressing problems when needed. Feel free to write about zany, irrelevant lists if you can’t think of anything better; it’s really just about strengthening your idea-generating muscles.

Lists I often write include stuff like, “10 Novels I Would Like to Write,” “20 Businesses I Could Start Tomorrow,” “10 Blog Articles for My Site,” or chapter lists for books I want to write someday.

Do this each and everyday and watch your creative muscles grow. 3. Mastermind Groups

Mastermind Groups

Photo Credit: rosefirerising | Flickr

Mastermind groups are a fantastic way to leverage the thoughts, knowledge, and inspiration of others in your path to success and happiness. Masterminding is nothing more than surrounding yourself with like-minded people who have similar goals.

You can create a formal group that sits down and actually involves in group discussions or brainstorming exercises if you like. It’s a platform where you can bounce ideas off of each other and take turns commenting on them.

You can also create something more semi-formal, where you meet every once in a while and sit down to discuss issues affecting your central industry or interest and then fill each other in on your individual challenges and invite ideas.

Or it can be completely informal. Just go out of your way to work out and socialize, etc, with people on the same path as you – mastermind ideas and inspiration will usually evolve naturally through your social interaction.

Online forums are also a good resource for masterminding and you don’t even have to ask people to specifically brainstorm. Just make a thread about the issue or situation and people will chip in with their different experiences and opinions. 4. Meditate Before You Brainstorm

Meditate Before You Brainstorm

Photo Credit: illusivemind | Flickr

One of the best ways to make yourself more emotionally healthy and tap into your creative juices is to develop the habit of meditation. After all, it’s hard to break into your intuitive side if your mind is filled with the clutter and stress of everyday life.

Meditation doesn’t have to be far-out or religious either. Just think of it as learning to calm and focus your mind. To mentally recharge. I make it a habit to meditate everyday as a part of a morning ritual I perform upon waking every morning – after working out and cleaning around the house. Just a quiet ten to twenty minute meditation.

Directly after this meditation is a great time to do a brainstorming session. In fact, you can make it a habit to brainstorm every morning after your meditation on whatever is currently your biggest goal, idea, or challenge. 5. Brainstorm in Your Sleep

Feeding yourself issues to handle while you sleep can often yield incredible results. Sometimes an issue is more appropriate for your subconscious than your conscious mind, and in cases like this, active brainstorming is nothing more than walking in circles. When you get in bed, meditate on the problem or idea for a minute, asking your subconscious to give you a solution by morning.

It can feel like magic at times. 6. Group Passing

While I do recommend masterminding, I’m actually not a big proponent of brainstorming in groups. Not that I don’t know they have enormous potential, but I’m just more of a solo-thinker myself and I find I don’t get as much out of them as most people do.

But if there’s one group-brainstorming exercise that really works well, it’s the concept of group passing.

Basically, you start with the central idea, or the foundation of what is to be brainstormed, and the first person in the group expands on that idea, without any input from the group. This person can even be tasked with coming up with the idea to be brainstormed.

Then they pass the paper to the next person and that person expands on it as they see fit. The idea is passed then to the next person and it evolves even further. The paper goes around the entire group and then the final result is shared with everyone.

Another thing I like about this tactic is that it can be done without physically getting together – over the Internet. Google Docs is a great way to do it; the online documents are easily shared and editable among the group. 7. Write It Out

Write It Out

Photo Credit: Abdulla Al Muhairi | Flickr

Using a good old pen and paper will never lose its effectiveness when it comes to letting your thoughts run free. In fact, some people prefer this as your mind works faster than you write, so by the time you finish writing down a thought, you’ve already got another in mind. In contrast, when many people type, they find themselves starting and stopping a lot, resulting in a much choppier process.

Do this any way you like. Free-writing is particularly effective for letting your mind run free. Write lists – this is a common brainstorming method for people who don’t even know what the word means, so it seems our minds intuitively work that way. And of course, you can create mindmaps.

One of the best things about writing is you can take this technology with you anywhere. Get a small notepad and keep it at all times, pulling it out when new thoughts cross your mind. I find this puts me in a constant brainstorming state, and I walk around creating throughout every minute of my day.

This type of constant approach allows you to catch yourself at your most creative. When intuition strikes, you can just sit down and get to spontaneous writing.

Whiteboards are also very effective. Hang one in your house with your major projects or developing ideas on them and it makes it official. You look at it and you get inspired. You have an idea and you add to it. It evolves as time goes on and sits further into your mind. 8. Give Yourself Omnipotence

I like the way Tim Ferris does this in his dream-lining technique. When he goes to goal-set, he asks himself what he would accomplish in three months time if he was the richest and smartest man in the world, and then starts from that foundation.

This essentially gives you liberty by removing all limitations. You don’t stop yourself from brainstorming down a certain path because “Oh, I’d need a couple hundred thousand dollars to do that” and then move on to another idea. Instead, you arrive at an idea that doesn’t recognize any boundaries and figure out a way to make it possible. 9. Brainstorm the Outlandish

Take the previous technique a step further by imagining nothing as impossible. Some of mankind’s greatest feats were accomplished when people decided to figure out a way to do something no one believed could be done.

How can we hurl a huge chunk of metal through the air so fast that it stays aloft and use it to carry people around the world? How can I create a light that never goes out so we don’t need fire to do the things we can usually only do in the day-time? How can I manufacture a device that allows me to talk with someone on the other side of the world as if we were speaking face-to-face?

The only way to produce impossible results is giving yourself impossible challenges and attacking them with your mind. 10. Walk Away From Thinking

Walk Away From Thinking

Photo Credit: bbcjk.king | Flickr

Sometimes you get too wrapped up in a problem and can’t extract yourself from it, so somewhere along the line in your brainstorming you may run into a dead-end or keep going in circles. What’s happening here is you’re trying to think yourself through it rather than tapping into your creative side.

Often, it’s best to get out from behind the computer or desk and go for a walk or do something that completely removes you from the situation. Your brain may just need downtime to sort things out, and you’ll often find that minutes after it’s out of mind an epiphany strikes. The Power of Thoughts

Thoughts may be the most powerful force on Earth.

In fact, they are so powerful that the existence of life on Earth is at risk due to things our thoughts have created – a worrying problem, no doubt, but a wild reality to contemplate.

Look around you. The computer mouse in your hand. Your laptop itself. The software that powers it. The table it sits on. Look up at the ceiling – the walls surrounding you and the building containing the room. The streets outside and the entire city laid out around you.

Everything you see and touch that is made by man was created first in the mind of a person and went through a process to be turned into a reality. In fact, some philosophers, and perhaps even some scientists, would go as far as to say that your entire reality is but a thought, and that your own thoughts can be used to direct and create the world around you.

I don’t want to get too esoteric on you today, but it’s clear that thoughts are an extremely valuable resource that has been recognized and even held in awe by wise-men throughout the centuries.

Will you be wise enough to see their value? Pick one of these brainstorming exercises and use it to start mastering your thought-creating capabilities. Tackle one of your greatest challenges today. And make doing so a habit. ”

[pixelgrotto]

A look at D&D’s Curse of Strahd

From about October 2018 to August 2019, I led a group of four friends through Curse of Strahd, the latest campaign book featuring a dive into the realm of Dungeon & Dragon’s most famous vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. It went well, and it was an interesting experience for me as a Dungeon Master, since this was my first time using one of Wizards of the Coast’s official modules. In the past I’ve always come up with my own homebrew adventures, and I still homebrewed a good chunk of Curse of Strahd, remixing characters and formulating story twists on the fly once I learned the ebb and flow of my group.

One of the things I love most about D&D, however, is that such behavior is encouraged, and pretty much all of the major 5th Edition releases outright tell DMs that they shouldn’t hesitate to make a campaign “their own” by only following the book when necessary. Thus, the version of Curse of Strahd that my players ran through was an experience specifically tailored to them - one where a motley crew known as the “Well-Doners” (like a well done steak...or a stake to the heart of a vampire!) were sucked into Strahd’s strange valley of Barovia and forced to ally together for the sake of survival...aided by a few key comrades, including a funny gnome mage who’d lost his magical mojo, the reincarnation of Strahd’s lost love, a grumpy monster hunter and a massive ranger and his dwarf wife. If I ever run Curse of Strahd again for another group, it’s very likely that many of these key comrades - as well as the general crux of the adventure - will turn out completely different.

To all enterprising DMs who might wish to run Curse of Strahd for their own groups, it’s worth first noting that this is very much a Ravenloft campaign. Ravenloft is the setting that sprouted from the 1983 module of the same name, originally devised by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then expanded upon during the heyday of D&D 2nd Edition. In a nutshell, it’s D&D’s horror setting, and the horror is very much steeped in the gothic tradition, with a heavy dollop of foes inspired by the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s to 50s, sprinkles of Eastern European creepiness and a dash or two of dark romance to complete the mix. I quite like this combination because it reminds me of the melancholy yet deeply beautiful world of Mordavia in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, one of the formative experiences of my youth and a game that has a great soundtrack for the backdrop of any Ravenloft campaign. (Interestingly, Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole were D&D players before they went on to design computer games, which means that the gothic realm of Mordavia surely is a clear descendant of Ravenloft.)

But horror of any variety isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and certain parts of Curse of Strahd - if run straight from the book - can veer quite sinister, because Barovia is ultimately a crappy place presided over by a crappy undead warlord. The introductory adventure of the module, dubbed “Death House,” actually deals with ghostly children who’ve died of starvation in a haunted manor due to the cultist ways of their mad parents. It’s entirely possible to make these kids untrustworthy antagonists in order to emphasize that the Ravenloft setting simply does not mess around, but since I was running this campaign for a group of four new players whose prior experience with D&D ran the gamut from limited to absolutely zero, I decided to make them into a spooky but still likable duo who could “possess” the players’ characters and offer sassy running commentary on the monsters infiltrating the manor. Like Casper but with a tad more snark, in other words - and the endearing nature of the children made the moment where my players had to lay their corpses to rest and confront their sad origins all the more compelling.

This act of balance - between ensuring that players recognize this as a dark adventure but also making sure that just enough light and humor alleviates the depression - is one that I tried to perform during every session of our game, and I’d encourage future Curse of Strahd DMs to do the same. I’d also encourage enterprising Dungeon Masters to perform a similar balancing act on the monsters and scenarios that permeate the adventure - specifically on the ones in the Death House opener as well as Strahd himself.

Death House, more specifically, is described in the book as a means to help the party quickly progress from levels 1 to 3, but played as is, it’s quite possible for players to get absolutely curb-stomped by everything within the manor - particularly a “final boss” that they’re technically not supposed to engage with, at least in a fair manner. Veteran RPG fans might relish the challenge, which is more reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than D&D, but newbies might not like having to re-roll a character because their first one got wrecked by a Shambling Mound after only a few hours of play. So, retool Death House to suit the needs of your party - in my case, I limited the encounters somewhat to prevent a steady drip of HP and also gave my players a few tips on how to beat tricky baddies via those aforementioned ghost kids.

The opposite strategy goes for Strahd von Zarovich himself, who might be the big bad of Barovia but is surprisingly squishy when confronted by a hardy group of level 8 or 9 players, especially if they’ve found all the fancy sunlight-shooting artifacts of the adventure that can limit his powers. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve seen on the D&D Reddit or a Curse of Strahd Facebook group I’m in where frustrated DMs have written something like “Strahd was killed by my players within two rounds, where did I go wrong” - and in order to circumvent this from happening in the last session of a shared storytelling experience that had nearly spanned a year, I took a heavy pair of tweezers to Strahd’s stats and gave him three forms, each with their own HP. The first was his regular vampiric self, the second was him riding on his Misty Steed-summoned horse Bucephalus, and the third was basically Strahd going into berserker mode with black angel wings bursting from his back. (I stole the concept art of Satan from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for that. Worked perfectly!)

Speaking of Castlevania, I drew inspiration from the recent Netflix series - which I’ve written about here and here - when it came to developing Strahd’s actual personality, because even though the book updated his original Bela Lugosi-esque appearance into something more regal and fantasy-inspired, his essence is still something of a two dimensional bad guy, and the fact that one of his eternal missions in undeath is to make the reincarnation of his original lover fall for him is a problematic pill to swallow in 2019, even if it is meant as an ode to Dracula’s obsession with Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel. And so I decided to make my version of Strahd similar to the depressed, weary-of-life Dracula in Netflix Castlevania, turning him into a vampire of complexities - a guy who’s been immortal for so long that he almost wants the players to kill him, a man who believes he’s entitled to the love of a woman yet somewhere deep down realizes the inherent selfishness of that belief, and a lord who’s grown bored with his kingdom yet can’t quite relinquish the power he’s held over it for centuries. My Strahd, in other words, was still a bad dude, but at least a somewhat deeper bad dude that the cardboard cutout as presented in the book, and one of my players even described him as “a little like Kylo Ren,” which I took as a compliment.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to return to the concept of the balancing act with regards to the structure and scope of Curse of Strahd, which is a true sandbox adventure. Players are not required to visit half of the locations outlined in the book, and the replayability factor is high, because the various artifacts that you need to defeat Strahd, as well as the specific non-player characters likely to assist you along the way, are dependent on a tarot card reading that occurs near the start of the adventure. The locations that I found the most important for my players were the towns of Barovia and Vallaki, the Wizard of Wines Winery, Yester Hill, Van Richten’s Tower, the Ruins of Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself. Other groups online swear by Krezk, a third town that my players never bothered to visit (though I would have urged them to go there if we’d had any clerics or paladins in the party, since Krezk is a town with a giant church), and the Amber Temple, the lair where Strahd obtained his undead powers (a place I feel is best suited for players of neutral or evil-leaning alignments). Your mileage may vary, but if you’re going to DM this module, one of the best bits of advice I can give would be to see which locations your players are naturally inquisitive about, and then focus on those. Exploring every nook and cranny of Barovia can quickly turn into a slog otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think it’s time for the so-called “Well-Doners” to leave the world of gothic horror behind for a bit. They’ve somehow managed to find their way back to their home plane and the city of Waterdeep, and only one of the party was infected with a seemingly fatal curse after their stay in Ravenloft. What further quests await, I wonder, and what new campaign book will I hack apart to suit my players’ tastes? That’s for me to know, for them to find out, and for another long blog post examination...sometime in 2020, hopefully!

All photographs taken by me.

[calorieworkouts]

Important Considerations When Looking for a Good Workout Schedule for Men

We all want the “best of the best", why go for less. Yet how do you ensure that the exercise timetable for males, that you have actually found is amongst the best?

If you are used to doing just the smallest quantity of on the internet shopping, my hunch is you most likely likewise had the experience, that whatever was guaranteed in a sales copy of any workout routine for guys you have actually been considering, did not essential suit the material and end result.

The wellness as well as fitness industry is not an easy group to explore. The marketplace is so large as well as everyone of training course is trying to obtain an item of the cake. Simply search for the term wellness expert in Google as well as you get practically 2.000.000.000 hits.

How in the world would certainly you ever before locate the time an energy to experience all those experts? Exactly how are you ever going to figure out if this so called "health expert" is really someone that will provide you with EXCELLENT QUALITY knowledge and also devices, that actually create the results you are looking for?

My purpose with this message, is to offer you some simple standards, you can make use of when looking for a workout schedule for men.

1. WHAT DO YOU WISHED TO MAKE HAPPEN?

This is most likely the most crucial question you can ask on your own, before entering into the physical fitness jungle and also trying to find a workout routine for men.

Are you trying to find a novice exercise schedule, exercise strategies for guys to build muscle (perhaps even a body building workout or long term body building training programs) or something a lot more straightforward like abdominal muscle routines for men?

There are a lot of people attempting to offer you something and some people are really gifted, when it pertains to delivering a killer sales copy.

The most convenient means to make a quick decision regarding a product is to compare the guarantee with your goal, before you obtain caught in sales duplicate causing your feelings with guarantees of "eternal youth”.

So ... prior to you start you trip, come to be really clear concerning the result you want. The more clear you can obtain, the less complicated it is for you to determine if a certain product will aid you make it happen or not.

2. Are YOU the Action in your Workout Arrange for Men?

Here is an extremely basic yet TRUE fact. No Person will certainly ever before come to be healthy and also in shape WITHOUT taking some type of activity. You NEED to workout to alter your body. If the basis of an item is supplements - DON`T BUY IT  - period.

You can ´ t consume you method into muscle mass growth. Diet plan is an extremely essential element that will certainly assist you reach your health and wellness goals much faster, however diet alone will not make your muscles expand - YOU require to obtain active.

Quality nutritional supplements can aid you along the means, however don ´ t depend on any kind of program that is based upon supplements.

3. THAT has actually created the item and also what does a Google search tell me regarding that person?

The extremely initial point I do when deciding whether or not I desire a program, that guarantees me the outcomes I am seeking, is to take a complete look at THAT the designer is.

Not just the name, but truly go into what kind of results the creator has made with various other customers as well as just how well acknowledged he/she is within the particular niche.

I don ´ t want to lose my time on someone who can disappoint me valid proof regarding their skills - select a person who on a consistent basis has actually been able to develop excellent exercises for men.

In completion there actually just is something that counts which is whether or not you have reached your goal. The much better someone is at guiding other individuals to reach their goal on a CONSISTENT basis, the higher opportunities are that you will certainly additionally succeed.

You may miss out on a few upcoming stars, but why risk a potential negative program as opposed to picking something that has actually shown to be efficient for a number of others seeking that exact same outcome as you. To see to it you obtain the very best workout for guys regular, select the "right now" most result creating program.

SO ... despite the fact that the sales duplicate may look impressive, hold yourself back just a little and do a little background research initially. All you have to do is do a simple Google search.

Simply kind in the name of the creator and also hit search. Once you obtained your search list, experience several of the web pages and also obtain a feeling of who this person truly is.

4. Exactly how is the Designer of the Product Looking?

This may appear like a strange inquiry, however you can obtain a great deal of understanding about someone's true skills simply by taking a look at them - specifically within the globe of health.

I am ALWAYS searching for the "leading with a good example" kind. I really does not make any type of sense to take weight management recommendations from a person that is overweight!

If you are looking for abs workout for guys, would certainly you not rely on a 6 pack even more than tottering tummy?. Would certainly you trust somebody who has actually developed a workout timetable for guys that looks like all he has been doing is reading books?

Simply discover photos of the creator and judge whether or not you find that person to somebody you would certainly like to appear like. If he/she is not looking healthy and balanced, possibilities are great that their program might not make you healthy and balanced either.

Only real function models, the "doers", can reveal you the way. I would certainly a lot rather trust fund a person with debatable ideas but resembling I want to look, than a person with their understanding backed up by science however appearing like crap. I try to find people that are leaders and also "walk their talk”.

5. Does the “Product Promise" seem Sensible and also Healthy?

Most people want our goals to occur the other day. Time is a significant component in a sales duplicate as well as some individuals tend to promise impractical amount of time in an effort to stick out from their competitors.

NO exercise timetable for guys will change you into superman in 1 or 2 weeks. Often magic can take place basically time, I just intend to make certain you take this into consideration.

Your body will certainly not transform dramatically over night, even though some individuals nearly attempt to market you that.

Making a healthy as well as natural physical shift will take a little amount of time. It does not have to take years, yet "how to get a torn awesome six pack 3 weeks" might by a little to great to be true.

6. Is the Workout Arrange for Guy You Have Found also Concentrating on Structure a Solid Practical Body?

I have to confess, that I am a sucker for feature. Feature is my # 1 top priority and also looks and strength as second focus.

During my several years as a health care specialist and also dealing with numerous athletes it becomes apparent that feature is much a lot more essential than looks and strength.

In the long term, concentrating only on looks most likely will wind up in an injury, which will maintain you from staying pretty.

I have actually had great deals of different kind professional athletes that concentrated on coming to be stronger in certain activity patterns just to become less functional.

The same point with individuals exercising to change their search in a particular means, neglecting to exercise their entire body, winding up with bad postures and multiple overuse injuries.

FUNCTION is EVERYTHING. Your body is an integrated microorganism. What you do for area side of your top body WILL influence every other part of your body.

Here are some basic rules to utilize for a good workout schedule for men

Should consist of all significant movement patterns: Squat, Lunge, Pull, Press, Spin, Bend

NO machines - making use of devices will certainly make your body much less smart considering that your stabilizers will not be compelled to function as hard, thus making you stronger however much less stable, which is a poor alcoholic drink if you intend to avoid injuries.

7. Exist Any Kind Of Item Declarations and What are They Telling Me?

Statements are an excellent advertising and marketing trick due to the reality that it makes an item much more credible. Most sales pages include declarations today so you could intend to be a little bit mindful (you will certainly never hear the bad tales).

With that in mind simply have a look at what people are outlining their experience with a particular item. What I tend to search for is enjoyment however without exaggeration.

When I look for workout timetable for males, I desire to recognize what individuals have actually experienced however if something sounds to enchanting I tend to get a little sceptical.

Also I favor video statements, as a result of the basic fact that it is genuine individuals. A written declaration can be made by any individual with a little creative thinking and images of friends.

8. Do I need to go to A Health Club or Can I Workout from Home?

The last thing may seem noticeable, but you need to make a choice on whether you are searching for a health club exercise timetable or easy in the house workouts without weights.

If you can not pay for or have accessibility to a nearby health club there is no factor for purchasing. If you can not locate any information on required tools just contact customer support and they must have the ability to help you out.

A excellent exercise timetable for men have to match with the devices that is readily available to you. If you wear ´ t have any kind of tools you ought to focus your hunt on body weight exercise (which can still be put together right into an awesome, muscle structure workout program).

So ideally the above criteria will aid you in your look for your best match. In my viewpoint there is NO SUCH POINT as a one size fits all workout routine for men.

There simply is to several private point to take right into consideration, HOWEVER ... since many guys like to develop muscle mass (some even more than others) there still is some incredible online workout routines out there that will certainly do precisely that as well as I will certainly be digging in and assessing them for you really soon.

[veiledflattery]

Does writing fanfiction really make you a better writer?

Does writing fanfiction make you feel conflicted? Do you ever wonder if you’re lazy, unproductive, untalented compared to writers who produce original fiction?

I definitely do. Building worlds and characters from scratch has always seemed so much more marvelous and praiseworthy. Fanfiction is great, of course. Just look at the community it helps you build, and of course the sheer joy of returning to beloved places and people long after the canonical series has ended. But as someone who aspires to be a published fiction author one day, I want to consider just one aspect: writing. Does fanfiction really make you a better writer in the long run?

That depends on where you fall on the fanfiction spectrum.

1.      Plain fun

This is what happens when someone doesn’t put effort into a fic. There’s a difference between writing and splashing words across a page. These fics are all over the place – often with wildly swerving plotlines, or ridiculously long descriptions, or Mary Sues… the list goes on. A seasoned reader can usually tell from the very first paragraph that the author didn’t spend a whole lot of time on this

If you want to become a better writer, it’s an active process: editing and re-editing your drafts; reading endless ‘how to write good dialogue’ articles; taking your readers’ feedback and using it. Just producing huge amounts of fanfiction doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to improve, even though you’re getting so much ‘writing practice’. Your practice has to be deliberate effort. So, this sort of ‘plain fun’ fic does nothing to get you close to writing original fiction

Of course, I don’t mean to say that these ‘lazy’ fics are worthless. There’s still lots of fun to be had exploring ad expanding the characters and worlds of your favourite series. As long as you’re clear that that’s all it is – fun, not something that will magically improve your skills.

The next few categories apply only to fic authors that do not fall under this category – meaning that they are actively trying to improve and produce good writing.

 2.      Might-as-well-be-original

These are fics that are only fanfiction in the loosest sense of the term. Usually very AU and OOC (not necessarily in a bad way). If you swapped out a few names and descriptions, tweaked a few scenes, this fic would be completely original fiction. Of course, it may still be dependent on the series it’s based on for backstory and such, but the individual scenes and plot of that story are entirely the fic author’s own craft.

MAWBO fics definitely count as great writing practice. While some fanfiction readers may not be happy (read: enraged) with your non-canon-compliance, what you’re doing is incredibly close to writing original fiction. You’re building plotlines, creating character personalities (if writing really OOC) and also practicing world-building (for AU fics). You’ve found your own unique voice, creating descriptions and dialogue in an original style. Writing original fiction is barely a hop away.

3.      Scary clone-stories

We’ve all read these fics. The ones that are based on a book series, and when you finish reading them you rub your eyes and say, “woah. I can’t believe that’s fanfiction. It’s like the actual author of this series wrote it!

Does writing scary clone-stories make you a better fiction writer? On one hand, you’re missing out on important skills. You’re taking the easy way out – using a ready-made world, ready-made characters, even ready-made tone and style. It’s like cup noodles: dump it all in a bowl, add a little water, stir, and voila! Insta-fic

But if you are really, truly achieving the sort of writing that makes people believe you could be the original author of the series in disguise, you are doing something special. Not everyone can produce that kind of an imitation

That’s because it requires study. You need to read through your source text intensely, dissecting how the writer achieves their affects, analysing and maybe even taking notes. Then you need to meticulously reproduce those effects to create a completely different yet inherently similar piece.

That is a skill. In fact, it is such an important skill that lots of high school and college courses test you on it. It gives you the ability to explore different voices and styles, making you a far more flexible writer

So, if you’re writing scary clone-stories based on the works of a variety of authors, you’re definitely improving your writing in a very important way that’s often underappreciated. Of course, you’ll eventually need to learn and practice other skills – plot and world-building and characters and all those obvious things, but you’re not nowhere.

4.      The in-betweens

The above two cases are extremes. An in-between is what happens when people mix them both. For example, a story in which the setting is an incredible replication of the canon world, but the authors uses characters that are entirely their own

Most fic writers probably fall into this category. If you do, then you automatically have the core benefits of the previous two categories: you’re getting great practice of the basics of writing (punctuation, spelling, dialogue, descriptions, etc). You’ll also have some of the additional benefits of the categories. In the above example, you’re learning to observe and replicate an author’s world-building while at the same time gaining skill in fleshing out your own realistic characters. There might be even more of a blend than this (canon-inspired characters who are similar to the author’s yet original?), but you get the idea.

 So, once you’ve figured out roughly where you fall on this spectrum, what can you do to make sure that you’re really milking your fanfiction hobby to get in some writing improvement?

It’s simple: write a mix. Confining yourself to any one type of fic won’t help you reach your fullest potential. With every single fic you write, ask yourself where it falls on the spectrum above. Note which skills you’re developing, and which are still weak. Then target those weak skills and build them – whether by writing a different kind of fanfiction or by some other means.  Actively push out of your comfort zone.

If you’re an in-between writer, consider switching around which parts of your story you ‘clone’ and which parts ‘might as well be original’ so that you develop a full set of skills. If you write scary clone-stories, consider gradually adding more original elements until you transition to in-between and maybe even MAWBO. If you’re writing MAWBO fic, make that final jump to writing 100% original fiction.

Naturally, this works backwards as well. If you write original fiction already but struggle with character development, for example, you could write some fanfiction on a favourite series where you ‘clone’ the world, plot, descriptions and so on, and focus all your efforts on creating original and effective character development within that framework. It’s a good way to concentrate on the bits that really need development.

[danieshub-criticalcaptures]

Danie’s Rules And Blog(s’) Info

I’m pretty agreeable and chill. You probably don’t even have to read this if you’ve got basic knowledge on how to roleplay and can maintain the fiction-reality, ic-ooc walls. I don’t have any special rules or passwords.

If you have any concerns, always always let me know! Disgruntled as I may describe myself, I’m big on communication and openness and honesty. Communication is key! The sword is also a key! And memory! Shame mine is so bad.

The TL;DR of my rules is

‘IC is not OOC, Fiction is not subject to the same restrictions as Reality, characters do not represent the beliefs and feelings of the mun unless stated to be doing so and may act in unacceptable ways

Please communicate with me if there are any problems or comments.

Please control your own content experience as opposed to my content output.

I play my characters how I like, you do the same, no playing each others’ characters.

Blocking, softblocking, and unfollowing is welcome and encouraged if you have want or need of it(but i would appreciate being told why/in advance since it’ll keep me aware. I may try and explain myself, but I don’t mean to try and get you to change your mind unless you seem up to doing so.)

Y’know, regular RP rules. There’s a slightly expanded version of this after this first section.

RP Conduct Information That Applies To All Blogs:

Semi-Selective: I’m not picky but I reserve the right to not play with someone, not play something, associate not with a person or persons, etc.

Non-Mutuals, New RPers Welcome: Sometimes I don’t follow just for the sake of keeping my dash in order or because I don’t wanna follow before I read pages and I’m on mobile. You're welcome to approach for play and plotting at any time! Also if your blogs are on sideblogs, you may need to IM the URLs to me so I can follow! Especially since I'm often on mobile.

OC, Gijinka, Pokémon, [Some] Crossover Friendly: I'm so down to try playing with just about anybody. OCs with default relationships with canon characters(mostly fankids and sexual or romantic partners where it wouldn't make sense to me) I admit I may be a little selective of. Crossovers are welcome, but my knowledge of other series is fairly limited, so it'd likely have to be either Pokémon verse or one of the handful I'm familiar with.

Anons, Non-RPers, and Scenarios Welcome: I love answering questions, even if my muses don’t always. Scenarios/NPC RPs/environment RPs setting stages are always welcome. Magic Anons are allowed but I’ll be selective with them.

Low-Medium Activity, Slow Responses, Dropped Threads: Permanent semi-hiatus, I suppose? There are a lot of factors here, but please bear with me, I’m not the fastest or most focused entity. I never want to drop a tag unless I feel like I can't respond to it somehow, but sometimes things get dropped. Sometimes I or my muse or my focus are more interested in one thread or one character than another, which means you may also be waiting while I’m playing with somebody else because that’s not something I can help. Thank you for being patient!

Multiverse, Multiship, Multiples Welcome: All verses and ships will exist separate from one another unless otherwise agreed on by all parties(and I’m down with that and any possible IC complications that may arise as long as communication/agreement occurs.) Same goes for multiples of muses. I love multiples! Everyone has so many various interpretations, and seeing them is the best. Age-altered characters, gijinka, Pokémon, etc are all allowed in shipping regardless of my muse, but for the most part my muses decide who they like, not me. Your muse may have unplotted feelings for mine--this will not be interpreted as forcing a ship on me! I will probably never be single ship ever. I just can’t limit myself like that. Obvs that doesn’t mean ‘I ship my G and this mun’s H so any interactions between my G and other H’s will be shippy,’ just that I could never commit to a 'I’m the only X you play/ship with’ kind of deal. It’s never in all the years I've been roleplaying been a good sign of anything when somebody is possessive of a partner. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a singleship RP partnership that wasn’t a disaster or abusive relationship(platonic or otherwise) behind the scenes. If you’re an extremely jealous/possessive rp partner and will have a lot of problems with me playing with others we may not be able to play together at all. If you're in such a posessive and restrictive relationship, consider talking it out with your partner. If they won't budge, remember that you have to live for you. Nobody will live your life for you and make the decisins you want, so you need to control your life. No matter what they threaten(which makes them manipulative anyway) you are allowed to leave that partnership. You are not causing trouble by warning others about them. Ultimately let others make their own decisions, never say 'don't play with that person!,' but if you have warnings for others, that's not a bad or inheritely wanky thing. Okay? Okay. ♥ Be safe out there. Communicate! Bottling things up never helps anybody.

Scenario-Sharing Is Okay: See me doing a plot/thread with somebody and also like the idea? If it isn’t something verse specific, I’ll probably be down to try it out with somebody else! Variety is rad!!!

Alternate Universes, Universe Variations, Different Time Periods Are Okay: This includes age-ups! It helps to let me know if we may have different understandings of the world and if it’d come up--for example, I mix canon sources and use "realistic” interpretations that may result in more severity or mature aspects where they might otherwise not be. If you’re more interested in a non-serious setting or have some other variation on the verse, let me know so I can see if I can adapt to it when needed.

No Default Ships, Most All Relationships Open To Pre-Establishment/Alteration/Interpretation: Obviously there are bases, but I have multiple interpretations of my own interpretations. If X is married to Y in one verse, or A is related to B in some verses, that doesn’t make it default unless it’s canon. Loch will always have or have had a period of ‘Master Guzma’ing, Matori will always work for or have had worked for Giovanni/Team Rocket, Ghetsis will. . .probablyalways have had abused his kids, but the degrees or other details can vary. Don’t be afraid to suggest things or ask about preetstablishing something!

LGBTQIA+, Poly, kin, etc Friendly: Honestly, I don’t have to say that, hence why it’s at the end. You be you, just don’t hurt or invalidate anybody or anything like that, y’know?  Of course, in character phobic/anti behavior is allowed with no assumptions on the part of the mun. Shitty as it is IRL, not everybody is good, not everybody is accepting, not everything is happy or neutral or peaceful, so no need to have characters or fictional worlds be that way.

Regular rules are as follows:

No Godmodding. - I play my characters, you play yours, and we write together.

Fiction is not Reality. IC is not OOC. - I do not approve of or stand by all of the actions, words, beliefs, etc of my muses. Fiction is an explorative platform, an outlet of all sorts, and so much more. As a result, there may be expressions of all sorts from all perspectives, most likely IC. I’ll do my best to tag anything on request.

“Mature”, “Dark”, “Triggering”, “Violent”, “NSFW”, “NSFL”, “YMMV”, “YKINMKATO”, Etc Interactions Are Allowed - I don’t really have any triggers I’d bother to note, so just talk at me about it first--some things can just happen naturally ICly and we can try and wing it. But brainstorming’s always good.

Sexual Interactions are For 18+ Muns Only - don’t feel pressured to do them, regardless of who or what you or your muse are if they're not something you wanna do! Smut isn't necessary in RPing and shouldn't be required by any partner(unless that's all you've agreed on/intended to RP,) and there are many, many people who will play with you if you don't write smut. Please don't think it's any different, no matter your age. US law would consider writing smut with a minor as exposing a child to pornography or something--and I'm not gonna get arrested for that if I can help it.

You Are Responsible For Your Own Content Experience - you don’t have to follow me if you don’t want to or find something I post or do regularly uncomfortable. You don’t have to follow me to interact with me. I try and tag everything, but I’m only human (a very desensitized and. . .humor-coping? Lax? human.)

Please Don’t Tell Me What To Do With My Blog Unprompted - of course, if there’s buggy coding; bad links; typos; you need something tagged; or you have a question, lemme know! And if I ask for input/opinions/perspectives, I’d appreciate receiving it! I also always accept concrit! But something like ‘you do this and you should stop’ will not be tolerated. My blog is my blog. I’ll tag things, but I won’t tailor my blog to somebody else’s needs/wants unnecessarily.

Softblock If Unfollowing - this reduces the chance i’ll interact with you if you’re not interested. Maintains the boundaries. Mostly for your sake and to keep me from getting confused lmao

Consider Talking To Me Before Blocking - not necessarily for me to try and convince you out of it or to explain myself(although there’s a 99% chance I’ll do the latter,) but because feedback helps.

[qutemag]

The movie guy reviews: Transformers -- The Last Knight

Article by Benjamin Harkin

Here we are. Every critic relishes this review, and many online have already let forth the torrent of bile that Transformers: The Last Knight deserves. Every Transformers movie I go in hoping I’ll be somewhat surprised that the movie reaches a baseline of ‘okay’, and bar maybe the third one which was brighter, more colourful and contained John Malkovich, every time I walk out frustrated and despairing. People say Michael Bay is an auteur – an auteur of what? Glorified tech demos? Showing off what the Industrial Light & Magic team can do? Because that’s all these movies have going for them. This is evident with the multiple aspect ratios, that’s right, IMDb records this movie showing three different aspect ratios, and another place thought the trailer had eight. You have black bars darting all around the image as the movie crops itself to fit around funky new cameras Michael Bay wants to toy with for the sponsorship. It is the weirdest, most distracting shit to see a movie switching aspect ratios all the way through for no discernible reason.

The film feels like six films meshed into one, or perhaps six plot threads focus-grouped into oblivion and smooshed together in a way that made some executive in a high-backed chair shift lazily in their seat to turn off the preview footage and say “fuck it, that’ll do” for the three editors to hastily clip together in something resembling a two and a half hour film. There’s the scene with a post-apocalyptic New York, ravaged after the climax of Transformers 4, with Transformers living in hiding of the anti-Transformers defense force set up to catch them, now that Optimus Prime is paralysed, orbiting the earth in a shell of his former self. Some foolhardy boys break into a ruined stadium with a giant jet engine ploughed into the field, saying self-aware bulldust like “we’re kids, we always get away with stuff!” Yes, that’s a fucking line in this movie. And not the worst by a mile. Then prowling the streets, looking under rubble, they run into a Transformer hiding itself under scrap. Couldn’t radar easily detect the hulking masses like Transformers for the military to destroy? Apparently fucking not, if a Transformer hides among some rubble, that’s a-okay. The kids then run into a girl, a strong-willed, adventurous-sounding 14-year-old who’s making her own way among the debris jungle and a close friend to this Transformer that gets mortally wounded by a fighter jet trying to save the kids. And do you think Bay uses this setup to anchor the film with a young heroine, make a movie that takes a U-turn on everything that the hypermasculine, Megan Fox-ass loving, dumb as a post joke-making crap that has defined his Transformers series? Fuck no, all the boys dialogue towards this girl is along the lines of “wow…she’s hot!” and “Are you single?” Fucking gross and sad is all I can say. Michael Bay can’t wait to get started on the explosions, objectification, and immaturity. The young girl doesn’t do anything of note in the movie, hell, I can’t even remember her name. She gets sidelined at the halfway point, literally left behind in a junkyard with her BB-8 rip-off robot. Michael Bay instead wheels out the contractually obliged Megan Fox stand-in to be the impetus for Mark Wahlberg to do something in the movie and crack a few lines about how single they both are. Wahlberg was probably given acting advice to approach the character by showing a face in deep thought over how utterly hot it would be if he and the Oxford tour-guide Megan Fox stand-in lady banged with the Transformers watching.

“Are you single?” proves to be a theme in this movie, more than any kind of motif or any of the half-mumbled prattling about values that Optimus Prime manages to heave out of this exhaustingly mind-numbing, overbloated movie. Characters are defined by whether they’re single or not, not whether they fight for honesty, or freedom, or love, or caring for friends, or whether they want to be friends with giant robots. Nah it’s the fact that Mark Wahlberg and Megan Fox stand-in in this movie are on steroids and the camera treats them like they’re perpetually posing for Tinder. Characters from earlier in the series, like John Turturro, make manically unintelligible appearances to rant about doomsday situations. A physics scientist gets laughed at when he tells the president the world will end in roughly three days. Optimus Prime manages to awake himself out of being basically a dead robot to shoot himself somehow across the galaxy onto his home planet of Cybertron, which he knows was destroyed but fuck it, why not go there for refuge? And why not fall back to earth if you’re a dead shell of a Transformer? Nah, the logic in this movie is adverse to science or plot logic, or continuity, or good filmmaking, his dead body can float across the galaxy instead! Cybertron is now run by some Sorceress Robot Woman who twists Optimus into getting Cybertron fixed as a planet by colliding it with earth to suck up the planet’s core. Fucking who knows. Cybertron somehow flies across the universe in the time it takes this movie to skim across five other unresolved plot threads, like why Mark Wahlberg has a spiderly amulet thing that’s super powerful and what he is actually supposed to do with it, or what the whole deal was with the three-headed dragon robot that appears at points throughout the film, or why Megatron wants to break out his mates Suicide Squad-style or why the humans are willing to work with Megatron who was the bane of everyone for the previous four movies, or why John Goodman’s cigar-chomping Transformer gets blown up by rockets and falls over, presumed dead as the camera cuts to a new scene, then he just randomly reappears later on, or why Bumblebee fought Nazis in WWII. And the location used for the scene of Nazis being blown to smithereens, full with Swastika banners draped over the looming building? That my friends is Winston Churchill’s house. I’m sure Britain’s favourite wartime leader, known for everything Hitler was not, span so hard in his grave he tunnelled to the earth’s core.

Stanley Tucci plays a drunk Merlin in a flashback to the Dark Ages, for reasons never fully explored, despite being another character in the present for the previous movie. The Great Tucci Retcon. Oh and there’s Anthony Hopkins too. A wisened masterclass of an actor, made remarkably awkward and a total caricature for a man who used to be Hannibal Lector. He’s in this, 110% for the paycheck. Bay makes him say ‘duuuude’ and ‘that’s a bitch-ass car!’ because it’s cool to make grandpa say hip things sometimes. He has a robot butler assistant who’s also a borderline homicidal maniac for reasons that are never explained. He also has a WWI tank Transformer who has ‘robot-dementia’ or whatever which is an interesting concept far too intriguing for a movie this unforgiveably terrible so the Transformer is yet another sidelined idea in a litany of focus-grouped half-baked brain farts.

The entire movie is unfunny, every joke (and there are heaps, all undercutting the otherwise dead-serious grit and aimed at the lowest denominator possible while conscious) hits like a fucking sledgehammer wielded by lemurs on crack, rushed in delivery, painfully without any semblance of cleverness or wit, the setup too predictable and the payoff so fucking moronic, with editing so poor in timing that a joke about the butler robot playing the sweeping Transformer themes on an organ to give the scene a gravitas was completely lost when Anthony Hopkins cranked his sad, demur grimace up to the butler so slow you could’ve gone to the bathroom and back and the joke would still be playing out. I’ve said it once after Pain & Gain and I’ll say it again: Michael Bay cannot direct comedy and he shouldn’t. For whatever reason the gift of a funny bone doesn’t materialise in the filmmaking process.

The fight scenes are meh. Every one lacks any weight because frankly you don’t give a fuck about any of this while watching. You don’t care which Transformer fights which because they’re all so underutilised and shallow that you could probably get more pizzazz in banging your stapler against the computer mouse on a slow day at the office. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how half these scenes of metal clunking against metal were storyboarded. And they don’t mean anything either, Transformers are rarely shown actually being killed, and yet the ones shown dying without any fights or lead-up (because the editing is god-awful and rushed) are full on bleeding weird green blood which is probably too violent for a young kid, which is where this gritty, dark-looking, yet oddly cartoonish spaghetti-works is squarely aimed.

I should probably end this review somewhere. This sounds like a good place. I could go on and honestly, part of me felt the usual catharsis of a critic tearing a big-budget Hollywood mess to shreds, and giving the finger to this kind of spiteful, audience-hating focus-grouped piss that flows through the summer action blockbuster gate from time to time, but another part of me doesn’t feel that catharsis. Instead, a part of me feels a silent rage, because I know this review, or any other review, or any of all the people who happen to see these movies for what I could only describe as sheer self-flagellation and tell everyone else it is complete garbage, it won’t stop Michael Bay making Transformers, and it sure as hell won’t stop the franchise. Somehow this is what gets bankrolled over those millions of other screenplays of what could be great action blockbusters. Michael Bay has said he’s stepping down from the Transformers franchise, but that’s what he always says. Paramount have two more Transformers movies lined up for the next two years, they see this as being able to grow out into yet another expanded universe franchise with Bumblebee getting a spin-off movie. I know this is useless, this review. It’s just words screamed into a void, a void of producers and executives running endless focus groups, workshopping the movies through too many editors and writers and camera lenses for maximum 3D so everyone can spend the biggest amount of dollars possible. Because this is the thing: Michael Bay doesn’t care. Mark Wahlberg doesn’t care. Anthony Hopkins doesn’t care. Maybe the digital effects people care. All the people involved in this production, they watch the finished product and I’m sure that no matter where they thought their part was going, they were a little deflated and depressed by it too, especially the fifth time around, but they can forget about their shame at the end of the day. Because they’re all getting their paycheck and a contract for Transformers 6, and you’re doing yourself out of the $20+ you spent to see this rotten film.

(Transformers: The Last Knight is currently showing.)

[merilly-chan]

(Pictures taken from the E3 trailer on YouTube, KH13.com )

This review is spoiler-free, though I will put it under the cut anyway.

I won’t say much about the story but I found it to be adequate for what the game is meant to be - a prologue. I’ve seen criticism toward the end and that people expected to see more, I mean we all do since we’ve been starved since 2012, but what cannot be forgotten is that 0.2 was originally meant to be the prologue in KH3. And it was exactly that. An introduction, if you will. There were no groundbreaking revelations, but prologues rarely ever do that anyway. For good reason. The Realm of Darkness does not affect the Realm of Light in a way that Aqua’s story would suddenly make a huge difference before KH3. It expanded a little on her time there, made a few connections to the future and that’s about it. And after I’ve played 0.2, I feel increasingly glad that they removed it from KH3. Not only because the atmosphere is very different in the Realm of Darkness but because Nomura basically confirmed that we will not start with top tier magic when playing Sora. Quite frankly, it would give me quite the hard time to adjust to different gameplay after three hours of playing as Aqua. Style changes may not be present in Sora’s part, top tier magic will be missing at first and it would feel very strange to start with just the basics after three hours of tough bosses and the corresponding gameplay mechanics to make them easier. Not to mention that she’s controlled differently in comparison to Sora. Then the atmosphere. We all know without spoiling the game that 0.2 will not be so lighthearted, even with customization around. Aqua is alone in the Realm of Darkness and the ones who played the game/demo or have seen some of the trailers know that there’s more waiting for her. That’s bound to take a toll on her. It’s likely that Sora’s start in KH3 will be slower and a lot brighter, a completely different atmosphere compared to 0.2. Roxas’ part already had repercussions on the atmosphere at the beginning of Sora’s part, so 0.2 would make me impatient to see Aqua again.

The visuals are my personal worry and 0.2 somewhat managed to give me hope but also made me think that they’ve been trying too hard for too long when they altered the lighting. Something which became painfully obvious was how the models fluctuate a lot in quality. Especially in Yen Sid’s tower, but also elsewhere, the skin is way too red and orange, possibly due to high contrast, despite the light. The skin is shining brighter than my future at times. And once skin shines, it appears to be inflated like plastic dolls and it looks unnatural and hard. Skin does not reflect the light like glass or PVC does so it should become smoother. Which it will likely become since the quality changes drastically from one camera angle to another at times. It’s disturbing to see such a difference in color and softness of facial features within seconds. The lighting is sometimes too much, and sometimes not enough. Scenes which made the skin look smooth and more natural in the TGS trailer suddenly appeared way too overlighted. Shadows often add to the inconsistent appearance and were seemingly overdone at some points. So much that it made the skin appear blotchy and uneven. Since this was not the case before, they basically made it worse. Which is the cause for my worry because there’s a difference in trying to make things better because it looked bad before, and creating something worse in the next step and thinking it’s now more appealing than the middle. For comparison, the picture on the right is the TGS 2016 demo image, the left is from the E3 2016 trailer and the last from the actual game. To me, the TGS demo looked a bit better when it comes to the texture of the skin. It doesn’t shine too much and looks like she actually has pores and not a solid layer of hard PVC. Don’t get me wrong, they are on a good way and very often, the models look absolutely fine and beautiful. But skin tones change from orange to pale way too quickly from one second to the next without the light source having changed. And the faces shine so much that they look like a balloon about to burst. As I said, not always, but the inconsistencies are very apparent. It seems like the developers wanted to improve the models too much by adding too many lighting effects to the skin, which is just as bad as missing effects. All in all, especially the skin needs more balance in terms of lighting, texture and color. They can make it look worse than before by adding too many shadows and making skin reflect too much, which was the case for some of the Aqua angles in comparison to the TGS demo. The skin should still look soft and like skin after all. Also, the paler tone of her lips from the TGS looked better since she currently looks like she is wearing lipgloss/lipstick all of the time, which is somewhat unlikely.

Another thing is that Aqua seems to stick out like a sore thumb at times because the environment looks too realistic. This is mostly the case in areas which do not belong to any Disney world. It’s not terrible, but at the same time it seems a little… off.

Additionally, I feel like the whole interface, including text boxes, are too small. My friend and I really had to strain our eyes to read some of the tutorial boxes and the subtitles. The command box could also be increased in size a little as well as items found and objectives appearing. The health bar, including focus and MP, could also be larger to make it more apparent when your partner is in trouble. Once again, it’s not utterly terrible, but if you have to strain to look at the menu, it’s not exactly convenient. DDDHD did not have that problem and it feels like they made everything smaller to have more screen available for the rest.

Other than that, the environments in 0.2 were gorgeous. The feeling of height was achieved amazingly well in some parts and I liked the diverse maps, despite its small size in volume. The game sometimes suffers from input lags and control issues which I could not remove by calibrating the controller. That was a bit frustrating at times, but not to a point where I would quit the game. However, it sometimes ended in magic being used again despite leaving the shortcut menu already. Which can lead to untimely deaths if you cannot heal because of that. I’d like it better if Aqua wouldn’t always tell me that there’s nothing of relevance anymore. I like exploring…

Another feature I absolutely loved were the objectives. It’s something I would like to have in KH3 as well. Before, it was mainly battling through Heartless, reaching the end of the room, etc. Now we actually have to complete certain objectives like gathering gears, solving simple puzzles, etc. to advance. It’s pushing players to explore a bit while not being exceptionally hard. I truly love that since it gives the game a bit more depth than just running from one area to the next.

The gameplay was solid in my opinion and a good hybrid between KH2 and BBS. The controls are mainly the same in comparison to other KH games, which made getting into it quite a lot easier. People who have played BBS will see a few crossovers, with 0.2’s Command Styles (though they are now reaction commands with sufficient time to activate them), Shot Locks and Double Jump being present. However, the pacing in 0.2 as well as gameplay mechanics being thrown at you makes it seem like it wa specifically intended for those who are familiar with the gameplay already. The tutorial can help becoming accustomed to it, but those who have played a Kingdom Hearts game already will be at a huge advantage. (Which is not really surprising. 0.2 is not meant to be played as the first KH game since people would lack the entire plot. KH3 could still use some improvements, though but since this is more or less a demo, a lot of things can be overlooked. Something which was quite harsh was damage calculation, especially when some bosses stun you and basically kill you immediately afterward since you cannot recover and they don’t provide good blocking methods. (They break through the barrier and it’s hard to evade attacks.) Even in Standard and Beginner mode, a particular boss was rather harsh.

DDDHD felt like a pleasant remaster/remake to me. Everything looked sharper, more colorful and it lines in well with the other games now. The only thing they did not remove was the fish face issue, though that was not to be expected anyway since they did not do that for the other games either. The game also suffered a little from input lags which was noticable during flow motion when you tried to climb higher places. However, apart from it being a minor disturbance, the controls were fine. Something I did not like was what they did to some of the Reality Shifts. While most remained the same, quite a few became victim to Quick Time Events, which did not make me want to use them again since they were actually hard to pull off. That became painfully clear in The Grid and Symphony of Sorcery. I know it’s not easy because the 3DS has two screens with one of them being a touch screen, but QTEs are not exactly a good solution for a mechanic meant to be used in battle.

Other than that DDDHD felt like a genuine remaster which made the game look on par with the rest of the preceeding titles. Graphics are smooth, the controls are overall satisfying and the changes were otherwise subtle. Apart from a few new things like new Dream Eaters, there wasn’t anything groundbreakingly new, which was fine by me since adding too many additional cutscenes could make things more confusing rather than understandable. I did not like the mash-up of two screens int he opening however. With Mickey blocking a part of the screen and credits blocking quite a bit, it felt cluttered. Generally, I did not like the excessive amount of credits since the openings are so beautiful and having large blocks of names appearing doesn’t create a fitting atmosphere.

KHXBC was not particularly revealing. We got two to three revelations which are relevant to the overall story, but otherwise there is not a whole lot to be discovered if you play X or Unchained X. I feel like the movie was meant to give the Foretellers and the Master of Masters a personality since it is a side of X we haven’t seen before. The Foretellers aren’t the focus of the mobile game so it’s actually good to get more insight in that regard, especially if they become relevant. (I still think BC was meant to introduce that box so people don’t question where that suddenly came from in KH3.) However, we cannot forget that the movie is not meant to replace the mobile game. SE still wants to make money from that, so revealing the entire story would jeopardize that. Why play a time intensive game if you can watch a movie with the KH3 engine? I love the Master of Master’s voice, even a little better than the Japanese one, but it’s kind of sad that the nicknames for the Foretellers could not be carried over. Which is understandable since I couldn’t think of nicknames which would seem natural in their case. The suffixes for Aced and Ira are inherent to the Japanese language and more or less used for nicknames and familiar to those speaking Japanese. But English speaking people may not get the cute reference, unless they read a lot of manga, watch anime or are otherwise related to the Japanese language/culture. English lacks that and the names are not easy to develop nicknames for.

My final verdict is that the collection is definitely worth buying. A lot of fans didn’t get to play 3D and it is a good game to bridge the gap between KH2 and 3. It has story relevant content and introduces flow motion, which will also be present in KH3. 0.2 forms a connection to Kingdom Hearts 3 while also explaining what happened to Aqua in the Realm of Darkness. However, it also shows that the models still need some work to appear consistent in KH3 and have the right amount of balance in terms of lighting, shadows and skin tone, including skin textures so it can appear soft like skin. Unreal Engine 4 excels in backgrounds and map design, but it should not become too realistic to prevent characters from not blending in with the world. The gameplay is smooth though and I’d be glad if we can expect a more extensive version of that in KH3. 0.2 was a demo of sorts so a lot can be forgiven for such a small entry, but KH3 should definitely fix certain issues, especially regarding models and frame drops. I got the feeling that it was better than the E3 content and it is going in the right direction, but isn’t quite there yet, which is understandable if we look at the problems they had with the engine so far. I am pretty confident that they will improve a lot when it comes to KH3, though I hope they are not overdoing it like in 0.2 at times and find the right balance. “Verschlimmbessern” is a good German expression for that when they try to improve something and make it worse than before instead.

[ciathyzareposts]

Genre Hopping: Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)

Delivering Our Report

We offer our report to Finnegan, and he asks us various questions about the case. The simple point and click nature makes this quite obvious, there are only so many potential answers to each question, and it should be obvious which is the most appropriate answer each time. After he is satisfied with our progress so far, he gives us half the reward money (100 gold pieces), and tells us to continue to Britain. He also asks if we need the Password to leave the city, which of course we do. This requires us to look up information from the manual in order to pass some basic copy protection questions. Nowadays with the GOG.com version, the answers are handily collated into a single list to make it easy to get past.

Answering these questions correctly gets us the password: “Blackbird”. This allows us to raise the portcullis that prevent our exit from Trinsic, and means we can head out into the wider world. From here, you are actually able to travel almost anywhere on the map (although some areas are locked, or require a ship or other means of travel). The game very much wants you to travel north, to Britain, and really that’s the best option at this point. So far, we have completed one quest, and killed precisely zero humans or monsters.

I haven’t talked about the combat system, the equipment, or experience and levelling up. For large parts of the game, this is how it continues, although there is plenty of combat once you find yourself in the wilderness or perhaps exploring one of the many dungeons. The towns and other settlements are much more designed around you talking to the various inhabitants, finding out about their problems, and occasionally being able to solve them.

The key aspects of an adventure gaming are here, solving puzzles and problems through investigation, conversation and item management. This sort of RPG feels very much of a similar type to Quest For Glory, with the relative safety of the towns and villages giving you opportunity to talk to the residents and help with their problems, while the combat in the wilderness and dungeons is often more of a side quest than any particular focus.

For someone that grew up with Sierra adventure games amongst others, Quest for Glory was my introduction to RPGs. From there, the Ultima games seemed much more suited to my interests than the likes of Wizardry or Might and Magic. Of course many RPGs and other genres would expand their gameplay mechanics in similar ways, as seen in the likes of System Shock, Fallout and so on.

Perhaps in the future, when we reach the appropriate years, such interesting crossovers of genre could be written about. Let me know in the comments if you have a particular favourite!

Written by Andy Panthro

We talk often about what makes something an “Adventure Game”, much like any genre this one was very loosely codified but I’m sure most of us would know one when they see one. Certainly we have already covered games that stray in some ways from accepted adventure gaming norms, most notably the Quest for Glory series which uses the classic Sierra graphical adventure gaming engine to deliver a fantastic RPG series.

The Ultima series was one of the earliest commercial RPG series, and one of the most popular through the 1980s and 90s. As Origin Systems developed this and other series, they were always wanting to be at the forefront of new technology and game design. The increased graphical fidelity of the Ultima series allowed them to increase the amount of unique characters, items, interactive elements and mechanics. The peak for this was surely Ultima 7, in which you can bake bread from flour and water, weave cloth from wool, and in the expansion pack even craft your own sword.

What the game also allowed, which to an extent was already present in Ultima 6, was a point and click interface that can be used to move and manipulate items in the world. Items could be hidden beneath other items, such as a key beneath a plant pot, objects could be stored inside other objects. A huge number of unique characters each having their own dialogue and in many cases their own homes, with appropriate items to be found within.

This meant that quest design could be so very much more varied. In older RPGs, you may expect to be fighting monsters and finding quest items at the bottom of a dungeon. Ultima 7 on the other hand contains so many quests that would not be out of place in any popular adventure game of the time. To fully explain how, let’s take a look at what could be considered the prologue of Ultima 7.

Trouble in Trinsic

The opening cinematic is a curious one, for those that don’t already know, the main character of the Ultima series is a human from Earth, summoned to provide assistance to the land of Britannia (formerly Sosaria in earlier games). This summoning is often done by key characters and friends from the land of Britannia in their time of need. The opening of Ultima 7 on the other hand, has your character mocked and taunted by a mysterious Guardian, and a strange red moongate in the circle of stones behind your house. Knowing that Britannia must be in trouble, you walk through the moongate to find yourself in the city of Trinsic.

Here you are in the game proper, and you see two people in conversation, something awful has happened. Your arrival is a surprise, and yet you have managed to appear right next to an old friend. Iolo the bard is a companion that has followed you through several adventures, and amongst the information he tells you is that it has been 200 Britannian years since you were last here, and that last night there was a terrible murder in the stables.

This begins an entire section that is used as both an introduction to the world and mechanics of the game, and as a tutorial and copy protection (more on that later). What is very important in this opening section, and was both surprising and fascinating in 1992 as it is today, is that this introduction involves absolutely no combat at all. You instead are tasked by the Mayor of Trinsic to investigate the murder of Christopher the blacksmith. Whereas other games of this era and later would have you fight a basement full of rats, or throw you into the wilderness to face random combat encounters, Ultima 7 was confident enough to try something quite different. Indeed even in the previous entry in this series, the first actions you took upon starting a new game were to fight a combat encounter.

What is more, the game engine is able to show you the entire grisly, ritualistic murder scene without having to have a text box explaining what has happened. You can see poor Christopher’s body, the blood, the candles, and even the bloody footprints of his attacker leaving the scene of the crime. Your job as Avatar of Virtue here in Britannia is to embody the virtue system, to save the land from peril, but in this game more than any previous, this task also involves solving the myriad and often serious problems that face the people of Britannia.

As with any good adventure game of this period, it’s often a good idea to have a notebook handy. There are many things you’ll want to make a log of, and there are so many little side quests and locations to keep track of. As you play, you’ll find yourself often crossing back and forth across the world and occasionally revisiting areas. For this first quest, I took note of the graphic and disturbing murder scene. In the centre of the stables lies a mutilated body of a man, besides which are four candles, a bucket of blood, and a key. Clicking and dragging the key on top of the Avatar puts it in his inventory. You can also move some of the other items, douse the candles and this provides me with an opportunity to discuss the rather interesting inventory system.

In early Ultima games, there were very few items, mostly either quest items, weapons, armour, and spell reagents. These might be displayed graphically in the world as simple tiles, but became merely a text list once you had them in your inventory or were browsing a shop. From Ultima 6, items were graphically represented both in the world and in the different character’s inventories. Ultima 7 continues this but with a greater graphical fidelity. Items in the world have different graphical sizes, but also have an assigned size and weight value. Containers have limits as to what size of items and how many items can fit within them. The positives for this are that it creates a much more immersive world, full of items you can pick up and interact with. Clicking and dragging to move items, double clicking to use items. It does also present some limitations, not least that your inventory can become very cluttered and it can be very easy to lose track of where items are (you must be especially careful with quest items). There are also some game-breaking bugs where items can disappear.

For the most part, this is an enjoyable and relatively intuitive system, rather than having to remember keyboard shortcuts. To open your backpack you can double-click on your character, then double click on your backpack (the keyboard shortcut to open your character sheet is “I”, pressing “I” multiple times will open the character sheets of each of your companions in succession). You can click and drag the key into your pack, along with any other items that you think might be useful. Double-clicking on a corpse opens a little coffin-shaped box with any items found within. Searching the rest of the stables will lead you to discover the body of a wingless gargoyle, impaled by a hay fork to the wall of his small room at the back of the stables. The gargoyle seems to have been murdered because of unfortunately being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bloody footsteps lead out the back of the stables and then stop. The only way out is over a small set of steps over the fence, towards the eastern exit of this walled city.

Becoming the Detective

The next step is to talk to anyone and everyone that you can. The stables are run by a man named Petre, who lets us know that Christopher was the town blacksmith and he made shoes for the horses. The gargoyle’s name was Inamo, and he worked at the stables and lived in the back room. Since the murderer (or murderers!) seemed to escape to the east, it is worthwhile speaking with the guard at the east gate. The guard, Johnson, tells us that last night Gilberto was on guard, and he was found this morning lying wounded at his post. If you return to the Mayor at this point, he can give you an idea of where next to search. He first asks if you have searched the stables, and upon revealing that you found a key, he suggests asking Christopher’s son about it. He also recommends visiting Gilberto, who is recovering from a serious head injury at the local healer, as well as generally just asking every person in town about the murder.

He also reveals another piece of information, this is not the first time he has seen such a strange murder. The last time was four years ago, in the capital city of Britain. This will have to be our next stop, once our tasks here are complete. A quick visit to the healer lets us find Gilberto, who fills in some more of the details. He was struck just before dawn, and noticed that the ship “The Crown Jewel” had left in the ten minutes or so that he was unconscious. It is possible the killers took this ship, which was scheduled to leave for Britain. Another reason to travel to the Capital! He has little other information for us, so we head a little further down the street to the south, to visit Christopher’s place of work. There is nothing to use the key on here, but the place itself has been ransacked, and the laughter of the Guardian rings through our ears.

The Mayor said that Christopher’s son, Spark, lived with him in the North-west of the city, so perhaps he will be able to inform us about the key. Spark is a young man, fourteen years old (although his picture makes him look much younger), and although he is initially suspicious, he does agree to help. It is from Spark that we learn his father had recently joined the Fellowship, a new organisation that is unfamiliar to us, but seems to have spread across Britannia in recent years. There were troubles though, as Christopher had been arguing with the leader of the local Fellowship branch. Spark also lets us know that the key may unlock his father’s chest, found upstairs in his house. He also tells us that he might have seen the killers, a wingless gargoyle and a man with a hook for a hand. Finally, the boy asks to join our party to hunt for his father’s murderers. Bringing a teenager on a dangerous mission is perhaps not the best idea, but as Justice is one of the Eight Virtues, I accept his request and he joins the party.

Upstairs I do find a locked chest, which is opened with the key found next to Christopher’s body, and inside are three things: 100 gold pieces, a fellowship medallion, and a note saying “Thou hast received payment, make the delivery tonight”. What Christopher had made for these mysterious men, and why they killed him after receiving it, we will have to find out! Next step, interrogate Klog, the Fellowship leader, and see if he can shed any light on this matter. Klog resides with his wife Ellen, at the Fellowship branch in the centre of town. The building is quite large, and inside is reminiscent of a church, with pews facing towards a podium, where presumably sermons are delivered.

Trust Thy Brother

Klog himself greets us as the Avatar, it seems that word has spread quickly of our arrival. After the usual pleasantries, I enquire if he knows anything about the murders, and the first thing he mentions is that he has an alibi. Not suspicious at all, of course. Furthermore, he also gives us a Fellowship saying: “Worthiness Precedes Reward”, and suggests that Christopher must have done something wrong to have been murdered. So far this is giving me both a low opinion of Klog, and also his organisation. I decide to quiz him on the items I have found so far, but he denies any knowledge of any of them, save the medallion. He does mention that the argument was to do with Christopher wanting to leave the fellowship, and he accuses Christopher of “verbally assaulting” him.

As the Fellowship is an entirely new organisation since we were last in Britannia, I take the opportunity to ask about it. He tells me that the Fellowship is an organisation promoting a philosophy of “sanguine cognition”, based around the “Triad of Inner Strength”. This triad being, “Strive for Unity”, “Trust Thy Brother” and “Worthiness Precedes Reward”. He then asks me if I’d like to join, to which I reply “no”. He responds “Perhaps thou canst become enlightened another time”. If you reply “yes”, he tells you to visit Batlin in Britain to take a test to see if you can become a member. All roads lead to Britain, it seems. Speaking to his wife gives no further information, the only thing she talks about at any length is the Fellowship, repeating word-for-word the same speech as her husband. It does not take a genius to figure out that there may be something rotten at the heart of this organisation, and indeed the original game manual is in part written by Batlin of Britain, leader of the Fellowship, who gives his biased view on Britannia and the previous adventures of The Avatar. It is definitely worth reading the manual if you decide to play this game!

Our final stop before returning to the Mayor is to check in with the shipwright, to see if he has any information about the ship “The Crown Jewel”. The man’s name is Gargan, and he confirms that “The Crown Jewel” sailed for Britain early this morning. He is also initially dismissive of our descriptions of the potential murderers, before remembering that he did see two such people just before sunrise, providing confirmation of what Spark had seen. With no further questions or leads at this time, the Mayor will want our report. You can of course speak to several other people in the town, many of whom have interesting things to say, but for the sake of brevity it’s best for us to move on.

Delivering Our Report

We offer our report to Finnegan, and he asks us various questions about the case. The simple point and click nature makes this quite obvious, there are only so many potential answers to each question, and it should be obvious which is the most appropriate answer each time. After he is satisfied with our progress so far, he gives us half the reward money (100 gold pieces), and tells us to continue to Britain. He also asks if we need the Password to leave the city, which of course we do. This requires us to look up information from the manual in order to pass some basic copy protection questions. Nowadays with the GOG.com version, the answers are handily collated into a single list to make it easy to get past.

Answering these questions correctly gets us the password: “Blackbird”. This allows us to raise the portcullis that prevent our exit from Trinsic, and means we can head out into the wider world. From here, you are actually able to travel almost anywhere on the map (although some areas are locked, or require a ship or other means of travel). The game very much wants you to travel north, to Britain, and really that’s the best option at this point. So far, we have completed one quest, and killed precisely zero humans or monsters.

I haven’t talked about the combat system, the equipment, or experience and levelling up. For large parts of the game, this is how it continues, although there is plenty of combat once you find yourself in the wilderness or perhaps exploring one of the many dungeons. The towns and other settlements are much more designed around you talking to the various inhabitants, finding out about their problems, and occasionally being able to solve them.

The key aspects of an adventure gaming are here, solving puzzles and problems through investigation, conversation and item management. This sort of RPG feels very much of a similar type to Quest For Glory, with the relative safety of the towns and villages giving you opportunity to talk to the residents and help with their problems, while the combat in the wilderness and dungeons is often more of a side quest than any particular focus.

For someone that grew up with Sierra adventure games amongst others, Quest for Glory was my introduction to RPGs. From there, the Ultima games seemed much more suited to my interests than the likes of Wizardry or Might and Magic. Of course many RPGs and other genres would expand their gameplay mechanics in similar ways, as seen in the likes of System Shock, Fallout and so on.

Perhaps in the future, when we reach the appropriate years, such interesting crossovers of genre could be written about. Let me know in the comments if you have a particular favourite!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/genre-hopping-ultima-vii-the-black-gate-1992/

[writingguide003-blog]

Writing Tips: Writing Beyond The 5 Senses

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Writing Tips: Writing Beyond The 5 Senses

Writers are told to ‘show not tell’ almost as frequently as they’re told to ‘write every day.’ In today’s article, Gila Green explains how to go further than just our basic senses.

The most useful way to show what you want to say is to tap into the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing and get into the ‘why’ behind each sense.

In other words, you must ask yourself why does that particular character notice the hot waiter in the restaurant, while the other only smells the overuse of bleach in the room, while still, a third can’t drown out the exacerbating pop music in the background?

Once you can answer that question, you can show your readers what they need to know about each character. You simply choose the correct sense you need to get that information across to your readers.

If you choose the right sense, you will have successfully shown not told the reader. Voila!

We can go way beyond the classic 5 senses

But perhaps our hyper-focus on these classic five senses—courtesy of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who originally said humans have five senses in his De Anima Book II—has caused us to neglect other senses.

Neuroscience says Aristotle is wrong

There may be as many as 22 to 33 senses according to the latest scientific research. That’s what the neuroscientists tell us and that gives us between 17 and 29 more reasons to celebrate as writers.

The more tools we have in our writer’s toolkits, the wider our range and the more chances we have of reaching wider audiences.

Use your intuition

We intuitively know about many of these ‘new’ senses but most of us neglect to apply these valuable gems in our writing. They can be vital for creating unique characters and character worlds.

As master writer Stephen King says, we want our readers to “prickle with recognition” when they read our writing and what better way than to manipulate some of the many senses most of us instinctively recognize but aren’t taught to identify as universal, human senses.

Equilibrioception

One of the most fascinating under-talked about senses is the physiological sense called equilibrioception, better understood as our sense of balance. This sense enables us to walk without falling.

Equilibrioception applies equally to animals and humans. This means a dog or a cat with no sense of balance could provide as much comic relief as a person who lacks a sense of balance could provide tragedy in your writing.

Even something as simple as a character with a cast on his arm or leg loses the full sense of equilibrioception and can be used by an adept writer as a unique handicap in a story.

When we lose our equilibrioception we feel sick.

Consider riding on a merry-go-round. A disturbance with your sense of balance can make you feel nauseous, dizzy, or disoriented. This could apply equally to a character who has overdone it in an amusement park as it can to someone with Alzheimer’s or vertigo.

In fantasy or science fiction, there are endless possibilities you could explore by playing with a character’s sense of balance. A magic wand in the wrong hands might disable everyone around them; no one could catch the villain if no one could chase them.

Magnetoreception

A second fascinating sense is called magnetoreception. This is the ability to detect magnetic fields to pick up direction, location, or altitude.

Roughly 50 different animal species that we know of use the Earth’s magnetic fields to get around. These include birds, insects, and mammals, including mice and bats.

This sense would come in truly handy when you’re trying to get somewhere, especially if you’re lost in a dark forest, in cold outer space, or in a magical maze.

There is a myriad of ways these senses can be applied to fantasy, sci-fi, magical, and horror. Magneto from Marvel’s X-Men comics is probably the best-known example. For anyone not into X-Men, Magneto can generate and control magnetic fields.

Detecting magnetic fields, altitudes, and locations can be used by writers who stick with realism, too. We do have a mineral called magnetite in our brains and bones. Who knows? One day scientists might figure out that humans can detect magnetic fields, that scientist might be the main character in your next novel.

No sense of time

A third neglected sense in much of our writing is our sense of time. The ability to perceive long vs. short periods of time passing may come from two different parts of our brain, but either way, it’s a great sense to manipulate in your writing.

Who doesn’t have it? What are the stakes?

When did you last read a book in which one of the characters couldn’t track time? Never?

Yet, it opens up so many possibilities for unforgettable, relatable characters we can all empathize with. All of us know at least one person who doesn’t seem to have any sense of time.

I’m not even talking about toddlers who lack the brain structure to even comprehend a sense of time. Yes, little kids really do live in the ‘now’. Emotions often run high around people big or small who have no sense of time and that makes for great drama in a novel.

I used the sense of time as a writing exercise in one of my classes and one class participant based an entire short story around it.

She wrote about an American couple who longed to move to Mexico because they couldn’t fit into their time-conscious American society. They were forever losing jobs and missing appointments because they just couldn’t get it together on time. Ouch!

In the end, they couldn’t even escape a society they felt at odds with because they missed their flight! There was a general sense of recognition in the writing class and you could see the writer had tapped into something universal.

Proprioception

Proprioception is another sense you may not be able to define and that you should add to your writer’s toolkit.

Proprioception is the ability to distinguish your body from the rest of the world and move it (i.e., we can scratch our feet without looking because we know where they are).

What about a character that lacks proprioception? What if that character was a famous football player who suddenly loses his sense of proprioception? How devastating for any career but for athletes in particular.

Can you think of other ways proprioception can be used as a dominant sense in a novel?

Sense of effort

Before we pick anything up, we have a sense of how much effort will be required to successfully lift it. If you take a deep breath and prepare yourself to haul a heavy suitcase only to discover it’s empty, you are momentarily thrown off balance.

This is an excellent sense to take advantage of in children’s writing. For me, this immediately makes me think of young children who miscalculate the effort it takes to throw things and who go tumbling backward or flying forward. You can explore this sense yourself and see what you come up with.

A new take on old senses

Though I encourage writers to apply under-used or never-used senses to liven up their writing, it doesn’t mean the classic five are in the clear. At least two of them need to be revamped: smell and taste.

We can smell a lot more than roses

Here’s some information about our olfactory sense that you can use to apply the sense of smell in new ways in your writing.

You can move way beyond sweet, spicy, and citrus perfume, a trillion scents beyond, in fact. Yes, humans can sniff over one trillion scents, including fear and disgust (through sweat).

And there’s a reason why your mom was always telling you to wash your runners. Women do have a superior sense of smell. Consider that the next time your heroine walks into a laundromat or a gym.

We eat therefore we write

Everything I wrote about smell applies to everyone’s favorite sense: taste. Don’t be afraid to explore beyond the standard sweet, sour, salty and spicy (crunchy peanut butter anyone?).

Scientists are split on whether we can taste savory (cheese, meat), fat, and calcium. There’s no reason why writers should be.

Why not have a heroine who can’t bear the taste of fat or calcium engaged to be married to someone whose greatest love is to cook for her using many fat and calcium-filled ingredients?

This is a nice change on the character with the sweet tooth, which I admit, I’m guilty of using in more than one novel.

When it comes to the classic 5 senses, I need to swallow some of my own new advice.

Could expanding your use of characters’ senses change and improve your writing? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

Gila Green is a writer, editor, and EFL teacher. Her four novels include White Zion, Passport Control, King of the Class and No Entry (the first in a YA series). She does most of her writing in a converted bomb shelter overlooking the Judaean Hills, which were once the heart of the Kingdom of Judah. She teaches creative writing online at WOW-womenonwriting. Follow Gila on social media via: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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Writing Tips: Writing Beyond The 5 Senses

[celticmythpodshow]

Another Writer's Journey

Please accept my apologies for writing about myself. I generally try and avoid this as I feel I am nowhere near as important as the stories I tell (and those that we tell as far as the Celtic Myth Podshow is concerned). That having been said, let's plunge on in!

When I moved from Primary School to Secondary school (after the now legendary 11+ examination), one of my favourite lessons was the English class. At 11 years old I was far too young to understand much about Grammar or story/poem analysis, but I loved the act of creation involved in summoning imagery and meaning from words. Plain and simple words that when strung together could create pictures in my mind and feelings in my chest.

One memory that sticks in my mind as significant because it told me, even at that tender age that I had an intense desire to write, was a class exercise that progressed over an entire term. We were each asked to write a single-page, short and concise  story and then read it to the entire class. I was in heaven! I wrote an adventure story involving a dangerous trek in the jungle and eventual possible rescue. My story stretched the limits of our allotted time as I had filled well over a dozen pages of the small A5 exercise books that we used to be given at school. After I had finished - I don't remember exactly what the teacher said - my fellow class-mates were asked to give their feedback to the teacher and they all asked for more detail about my story and for the tale to be completed. The teacher, perhaps bowing to popular pressure, asked me to complete the story and for the next couple of weeks I wrote continuing episodes and read each out in turn to the class. The joy I felt in entertaining my peers with my my writing is a joy that has never left me. To give pleasure with mere words is something that can never be underestimated.

As my relationships with my school-mates developed, I played many games and don't remember writing much other that the allocated tasks that we were all set. Our play-ground games however were rapidly becoming increasingly complex. A small group of my intimate inmates decided to each take on the role of a particular leader/hero/ruler on a planet in some imaginary Science Fiction universe that we had decided upon. My own planet of bio-mechanical inhabitants acquired technical drawings of the transport system within its major cities, biological descriptions of the alien inhabitants (vaguely resembling cones on wheels as I recall!) and each city having its own history mapped out. Hours and hours of work. It never got used in our games of course, but for me the creation of back-story was as essential as the game itself.

Writing after Leaving School?

As my school-years were coming to an end, my close-knit circle of buddies discovered the very first 3 volume box-set of an imported game from America, ridiculously named "Dungeons & Dragons". The game was what later came to be known as a 'role-playing game' with one person acting as a story-teller come referee come guide and the other players taking on a role of a character within a Fantasy-based universe.

The big difference between this and other traditional methods of story-telling was that the actions that the players decided to take determined the future course of events within the story. The Fantasy universe moulded itself around us as we played. We were living in the story! I had come home! What an amazing discovery.

It wasn't long before I, myself, took on the part of the Dungeon Master (as the referee was called) and was creating my own interactive stories with a group of players. My own game had maps (based on hex-paper) that were filled in as the players explored the world I had created plastered all over one wall of my very small flat and the remaining space in my flat taken up with as many chairs as I could fill into the space. At one stage, our story had over ten people meeting weekly to continue their adventures and the whole story arc carried on for over a year.

That was something that required almost constant attention and a vast amount of time and energy to complete. Something that I would never advise anyone of even half-sane mind to contemplate doing!

Turning to Myths & Legends

Coming into my early 20's, my daily reading consumption increased and although I didn't put pen to parer at this time not only did my love of fiction grow and evolve but my love of mythological and religious stories also grew. My interests spread into a more academic and factual direction in order to find out where these stories came from and to seek answers as to why some versions of the same story were different and why there were similarities between stories from widely different cultures around the world. This was a long time before I discovered Joseph Campbell! My love of story, mythology and comparative religion eventually lead me to study ritual and magic - which, in my opinion, is yet another variety of living story. But that is really a different tale that I shall save for another day.

One of my greatest loves from my first days at Secondary schools was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and the whole Middle-Earth mythos. To be fair, it is a love that I carry with me to this day. Back in 1977, I found the Silmarillion to be hard reading at my first attempt, but I fast grew to love it. In particular, the Song of Creation found in the first part, Ainulindalë, tells of the creation of Eä, the "world that is" struck a deeply resonant chord within my soul.

What happened next is something that I look back on with great awe and wonder. Without realising it, my next actions were to act as a prelude to the type of story-telling that I was to take up again 30 years later! I recorded myself reading the Ainulindalë accompanied by music by Tangerine Dream (I think the album was Phaedra) and loved every minute.

It was only when I listened to the cassette recording that I was over-whelmed and the hairs on my arms stood up and my heart raced with some form of excitement that I had never felt before. Something magical had happened. When I was reading about the Horns of Ulmo, resounding in the Deep Waters, there were horn blasts in the music. So much synchronicity happened in this reading whose true significance I missed at the time. This was something unique and wonderful. But hey-ho! - I was 18 years old, and forgot all about it in the rush of rapidly expanding teenage hormones in the following months.

Time for a Quick Break

Let's take a small break in the narrative here, while I grab a glass of water, you get to wonder what on earth you are doing wasting your time reading the drivel that I have written and I skip forward in time. As we go, we can jump over several failed attempts at both fiction and non-fiction writing, and arrive at the point in my life where my long-suffering wife (the gorgeous Ruthie) and I decide to start a podcast about Celtic Mythology. The Celtic Myth Podshow was born at Imbolc, 2008 - it seemed to us a suitable birthing time. Reading the complex Irish myths out aloud seemed to us an excellent way of learning them, understanding them and perhaps help other people out with the same tasks. It was only natural that eventually we would want to cover all the stories of the Celts that we could find.

For two years, I scripted the ideas we came up with and along with friends and family we recorded and released shows every fortnight. There was no way in this or any other universe that we could maintain this pace and were it not for my becoming seriously ill and requiring major surgery due to Cancer at the end of 2009, I think I/we would have burned out and never carried on making any shows or telling any more stories.

Health is something that when you are healthy you can often take for granted. I certainly did. Without it, each physical movement initially and later any focus or concentration became something that rapidly drained my energy. I learned about Spoon Theory very quickly indeed. Google it - it's worth it.

Life events (family, career, housing, finances etc.) began to overtake us in 2015-2016, and the rate at which we could produce shows dwindled as more and more of our focus and attention had to be placed on far more immediate concerns. I think we only managed to get out one show in 2016 and another in 2017. Early in 2017, I discovered that I had Leukemia and we were again forced to focus on health and the need to rapidly find a new home.

Patience, Pacing and Priorities

It is strange that no matter how important your writing is to you, or how much you value your creative work and no matter how much pleasure you get from seeing or hearing the joy that other people have from hearing or reading your work, there is no way that the inspiration will flow when your life's basics are under threat. I thought that writing and creating would be a great distraction form the more serious problems in our lives. I was, however, totally wrong. It just wouldn't happen. It took time - a long time - for me to even begin to accept this. Starting a new podcast, Celtic Tomes, was my refusal to accept that I could do nothing creative during this time. Eventually this podcast too had to come to a halt as life's needs escalated. This was a frustrating time that I am glad we seem to have passed through. It is over and I hope I have learned some very important lessons about patience, pacing and the priorities in our lives.

At the height of the Summer heatwave in this year (2018), we moved and began to unpack and settle. I could feel the relaxation beginning to seep into my bones. Despite the mountains of boxes around me, the presence of inspiration began to make itself felt.

For me, inspiration works in a very strange and yet defined way. It seems I have to make space in my life and my head, start the process off by moving a little way towards an idea and then whatever it is that comes from outside of myself, from the wider universe, from the Realms of the Fae or the Gods or whatever (be it Awen or Imbas or just plain Inspiration), I begin to feel its breath rushing into me towards a new creation. They say the word 'inspiration' comes from from the Proto-Indo-European root *en "in" + spirare "to breathe". Breathing in the Spirit of creation from the cosmos perhaps? It is interesting that the word 'spirit' also has the same roots....

Flexing My Muscles (as if!)

I felt I needed to flex my writing muscles again. "If you don't use it, you lose it" is a common expression, but I am not sure it means you forget how to write, but I think it may mean you lose contact with that flow of "spirit" or whatever that brings a creation into life and full being. I had been listening to podcasts about the Craft of Writing for some time and as October was approaching, I began to hear more and more about NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stands for the "National Novel Writing Month" and it always takes place during the 30 days of November. In this time you do your best to write 50,000 words to create a novel (novella perhaps?). Success or failure is not strictly the main goal. The main goal of #NaNoWriMo is to get you writing.

So I made a decision to write a novel. Research and preparation of that novel has been one of the most enjoyable and rewarding pastimes that I have encountered in the last few years and I am incredibly excited to start writing on November 1st. My novel is going to be a ghost story set in the middle of a disaster zone at a place I know well in Hastings - the town where I was born.

It's only 10 days away now and I find myself 'itchy' to start writing. As I can't start on my novel until November, I found my mind drifting to other projects. Perhaps I could start thinking about the next book for the Celtic Tomes? So, I totaled the votes cast for the next book and started some preparation. Fantastic!

And yet, still the Universe had not finished with me.

Unfinished Business

Last week, I woke up wondering where my work period that day could be directed, opened my laptop and found myself opening up the Script for the Branwen story! The Second Branch of the Mabinogion is the next story to be told in our main podcast, the Celtic Myth Podshow, and the script is about half-way completed and stands at about 22,000 words. I found myself re-reading and editing what I had already written, suddenly aware that I was mentally preparing myself to finish the script. I sent my prayers of thanks up to the Gods or whoever was helping me with the inspiration and went to bed a very happy Gary.

A few days later, the realities of the situation began to sink into my dense, Neanderthal brow and I realised that if I were to avoid the same burn-out problems that I had hit before then I would have to heed the lessons of Pacing that I had tried to learn previously. I would have to take things very slowly indeed. I would have to work in tune with Life and not separate from it.

November is, for me, fully booked with NaNoWriMo and Life events, but after that, in the New Year, I can turn my attention back to the Branwen story and do some editing of my novel, some recording for Celtic Tomes and any other project that leaps into my mind. The important thing I have to remember, and I really must drive this home into my thickest of heads, is that I can only focus fully on one major project at a time. To do otherwise would be to tread, stagger and eventually fall on the stony path to a barren plain where nothing gets written.

Thank you for listening to the story so far.

Check out this episode!

[saints-prayer]

((I really like the questions from this ask box meme and I thought these questions can help expand the kind of world Cristo lives in. So decide that he should answer all of them rather than have a middle-man to select specific questions.)) 

Well, I was requested to answered these questions about magic and my experience with it. I hope these answers were informative as well as a delightful read. I enjoyed these questions and I wouldn’t mind to be interviewed again in the future! Well, it depends if I have the time for it of course.  

🔥 - What kind of magical powers or abilities do you have?

Mostly I use a variety of healing spells as well as defensive and status causing spells. I can use spells that have fatal effects but I only use them when the situation calls for it. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t used it ever since Necrosaro was defeated.

🌈 - What is your main element? If you don’t have one, what’s your main ability?

I would say healing magic is my main focus.  

☀️ - Are your powers more active during the day or at night?

I don’t think time itself affects my magic but after a long day of using it, I think my magical capabilities are more active during the day.

🌕  - Does a full moon impact your abilities?

From my experience no, but magic is very mysterious so I’m not ruling out the possibility. 

🔮 - Is there an object you need to use in order to get your magic to work? (Like a wand, a tome, etc.)

No, but there’s a lot of mysterious objects that have magical properties. The Chosen Ones and I managed to find some of them during our journey. They are quite useful as they can be use during battle. Personally, I’ve used some of them to assist me from time to time.

🎤 - Is there something you have to do to get your magic to work? (Like singing, casting spells, etc.)

Learning how to use the spell itself comes first. Learning requires knowing what to focus on and how to use your mental energy so you can cast it. Although what kind of things you should focus depends heavy on what kind of spell to have Each spell has it’s own incantation you need to chant in order to get it work.

If you want to learn how to cast magic, I recommended you start out with the basics spells first. Some of the more complex spells shouldn’t be casted until you’re experienced because they can very straining to the user...

🍼 - Were you born with magic or did you have to do something to get it?

Oh no, people aren’t born with magic, it’s something that you need learn how to do. But now that I think about it, I’m not so sure if the same applies to monsters...

🎎 - Are there other people in your family that use magic?

I don’t know much about my family background because of personal circumstances. So it’s possible that they might know magic, however, I wouldn’t know for sure. 

🍪 - Is there a kind of food that enhances your magic?

Oh yes, drinking magic potions can really rejuvenate your magic especially after a hard day. It’s flavor is a bit of a acquired taste though because it’s made with all kinds of herbs and not all of them really complement each other. So in many ways it’s more like medicine than food. 

However, I notice that Ragnar really enjoys drinking them. I’m starting to think it’s because he like how they taste. Since Ragnar doesn’t practice magic, can’t imagine it’s for its medical properties.

🐶 - Do you have a familiar? If not, is there an animal that you feel a connection with?

No I do not and I don’t think there’s animal that I feel a connection with in a magical sense. But I do like animals themselves. 

💿 - Do you stick to tradition or do you like to explore modern ways of utilizing magic?

Well, I mostly use magic to heal or protect others. So I guess you can say that I use magic in a traditional manner.

🎲 - Do you believe in lucky or cursed objects? Do you have any?

After finding equipment like the “Sword of Decimation” or “Mask of Corruption” during my travels, it’s hard to argue against the existence of “cursed objects”. 

“Lucky objects” are a bit harder to distinguish. There’s a lot of items that have magical proprieties which can be quite helpful but whether they can be refer to as “lucky” I guess depends on your definition on luck!   

🍄 - Have you ever charmed or cursed an object?

No I haven’t, but they’re some priest out there that learned how to remove curses from people. Maybe I should learn how to do this sometime. I think it can be an useful skill to know in future travels.

🌱 - Do you grow plants for brewing potions or elixirs? If so, what kind of things do you make?

I haven’t try it as of yet. I do attend the church’s garden but we mostly grow crops. Herbs do need particular environmental conditions and it varies depending on the type of herb. While if you want to learn how to brew potions, it’s very important to do lots of research but at the same it also requires tons of practice before you get it right.

Even so, I can see how growing your own herbs or brewing potions can be useful knowledge especially if you are a priest. I would have to devote a lot of my time to research and practice if I decided to pick these skills up. To be completely honest, I’m usually very busy. So I don’t really see myself having that kind of time anytime soon...

💪 - Are you a newbie or an experienced magic user?

I would consider myself to be an intermediate magic user. I’ve been learning and using magic for quite awhile now and I learned a lot during my travels. But I wouldn’t call myself an expert yet, there’s still many things I need to learn.

🏆 - Is there something you can do that no one else can?

Oh no, definitely not! I haven’t discovered any new spells on my own! The magic I’ve used are spells that most priest or travelling clergy know. 

🎐 - Do you get tired after using your magic for a long period of time? Are there consequences to overusing it?

Yes, magic takes a considerable amount of mental energy, so you become very exhausted if you overdo it. You can drink a magic potion or either pray or meditate while wearing a wizard’s ring. But the most effective way to recover all of your magic after a long day is a goodnight’s rest. If you think about it that way, it’s quite similar to getting tried out physically!

😥 - Have you ever been singled out for your magic? (Like being bullied, being disowned, etc.)

No, luckily I haven’t. Magic is often celebrated in Santeem, even though not everyone practices it. Not only magic plays a historical role, having magical abilities has it’s societal uses and it’s often associated with being well educated. If anything, it’s more likely for people to get single out for not knowing magic if they are expected to know it(usually for societal reasons)...I think it’s unfair because I toughly believe that people have value outside of magical ability...

😃 - What is the best thing about having your magic?

Whether it’s healing wounds or protecting somebody, magic has given me the opportunities and tools to help others. Using magic to help someone in someway is very rewarding to me!

😟 - What is the worst thing about having your magic?

I’m not so sure if it qualities as a bad thing entirely but magic requires a lot of responsibilities. There’s still a lot of things about magic that we don’t know since magic is so mysterious. That means we still don’t know all the affects or limitations that some spells have. This is especially true when dealing with spells that are very complex. So knowing when or how to use your spells is vital but understanding the spells themselves have a bit of a learning curve. I felt this from time to time when using magic, especially during my travels.